Rational Developer for System z
Enterprise PL/I for z/OS, Version 3.8, Programming Guide

Specifying the records to be sorted

Use the RECORD statement as the second argument to PLISRTx. The syntax of the RECORD statement must be a character string expression which, when evaluated, takes the syntax shown below:

'bRECORDbTYPE=rectype[,LENGTH=(L1,[,,L4,L5])]b'

For example:

' RECORD TYPE=F,LENGTH=(80) '
b
represents one or more blanks. Blanks shown are mandatory. No other blanks are allowed.
TYPE
specifies the type of record as follows:
F
fixed length
V
varying length EBCDIC
D
varying length ASCII

Even when you use input and output routines to handle the unsorted and sorted data, you must specify the record type as it applies to the work data sets used by Sort.

If varying length strings are passed to Sort from an input routine (E15 exit), you should normally specify V as a record format. However, if you specify F, the records are padded to the maximum length with blanks.

LENGTH
specifies the length of the record to be sorted. You can omit LENGTH if you use PLISRTA or PLISRTC, because the length will be taken from the input data set. Note that there is a restriction on the maximum and minimum length of the record that can be sorted (see below). For varying length records, you must include the four-byte prefix.
L1
is the length of the record to be sorted. For VSAM data sets sorted as varying records it is the maximum record size+4.
,,
represent two arguments that are not applicable to Sort when called from PL/I. You must include the commas if the arguments that follow are used.
L4
specifies the minimum length of record when varying length records are used. If supplied, it is used by Sort for optimization purposes.
L5
specifies the modal (most common) length of record when varying length records are used. If supplied, it is used by Sort for optimization purposes.

Maximum record lengths

The length of a record can never exceed the maximum length specified by the user. The maximum record length for variable length records is 32756 bytes and for fixed length records it is 32760 bytes.


Terms of use | Feedback

This information center is powered by Eclipse technology. (http://www.eclipse.org)