Re: Workshop Tapes - was Re: Examine RDR Files
|
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Fish Fish via
groups.io
Sent: 26 August 2024 20:06
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [h390-vm] Workshop Tapes - was Re: Examine RDR Files
Dave Wade wrote:
[...]
I actually find your VMFPLC2 a tad un-helpful on these tapes.
On VM you can do a "VMFPLC2 SCAN" which lists the contents of the
first physical file, so up to the first tape mark.
This only has the "ABSTRACT LISTING" so then a "VMFPLC2 REW"
and a "VMFPLC2 LOAD" to get the contents.
You can then read that, and use the FSF, SCAN, REW and LOAD to
position the tape, check the contents of that physical file and load
it....
On Windows you do a SCAN and you get all the tape, about 300 files,
then you need to build a control file to get the ones you want.
I think it would be good to have options to skip so many tape marks
and only list so many physical files..
.. but that¡¯s just me... Touch¨¦. :)
So Hercules's SCAN always lists the contents of the *entire* tape, which you'd
rather it not do? A scan of the waterloo tape I have produces nearly 4000 lines of output, so yes, loess might be more.... You'd rather have the ability to limit the SCAN function to
only ONE specific physical (tapemark delimited) file? Yes? Well of course I am greedy so a range would be good, so something like -files n<-m>
And you'd also rather not have to manually build the ctlfile in order to LOAD
only the specific file(s) you want? Yes?
Well yes... How about this: make the <ctlfile> an optional argument for the SCAN
function, which, when specified, specifies the name of the <ctlfile> that you
want SCAN to automatically *create* for you instead? (i.e. when specified, the
tape's contents would not be shown, but rather would simply be written to
the specified output file instead.
Sounds good. Then to easily LOAD only the file(s) you want, you could simply edit that file
and either delete (or comment out) all of the file(s) you *didn't* want, and
then specify that <ctlfile> in your LOAD command.
Yes, I mean for the Waterloo tape it may not be necessary to delete but yes it would be good... Does that sound like something that would make Hercules's vmfplc2 utility a
little easier to use?
Yes
--------------------
Just as an explanation, Herc's vmfplc2 will never be as easy to use as VM's, due
to the need for a <ctlfile> due to the difference in the processing hosts. VM's
VMFPLC2 tool's filesystem is quite different from your Hercules host's, as well
as its data format too (EBCDIC vs. ASCII) and the fact that on VM, it's able to
physically position the physical input tape and it will stay there until the next
command is issued, whereas on your Hercules host, each time a new
command is issued, the input tape always starts out positioned at loadpoint
each time (not to mention the need to be able to "translate" a CMS filename
to/from a Linux/Windows host filename for the DUMP and LOAD functions).
Thus the need for a <ctlfile>.
Yes, I realize not being able to maintain position between commands creates a design challenge... Hopefully my proposed change will make creating/using <ctlfile>'s a little bit
easier.
I'd appreciate your thoughts, Dave. Thanks!
I think that¡¯s a good compromise. Have an auto generated control is a big plus. One last wish. Would it be possible to support tapes written using BLOCKTAP. We have quite a few tapes written using this.... .. the source is on here... --
"Fish" (David B. Trout)
Software Development Laboratories
mail: fish@... Dave
|
