IBM Mainframe Forum

Hello,

I am a beginner in the ALC, just want to learn the language so that i can get into some coding level.
I have got the knowledge about the keywords, flow and what to use etc..,.

The problem i am facing is unavailibilty of some sample code, so here i request some one to post
some sample codes in ALC like:
Accessing files
Accessing VSAM
Using Loop structures

And what ever you think that would help me.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Surya Naragani

see http://www.simotime.com for well documented examples

This is a very simple dataset copy utility.
I can't show continuation flags on the OPEN and DCB statements because the code block is too narrow.

The CSECT statement defines a CSECT; which is just a block of storage; it has the external name MINICOPY.

The USING statement tells the Assembler that register 12 has the address of the current location. Most, not all, z/OS instructions form an address by adding the contents of a register specified in the instruction to a displacement specified in the instruction. The USING statement tells the Assembler to use register 12 as the register, and for it to compute a displacement as required and to store the displacement as required.

The SAVE statement is a macro call. The System/360 Assemblers have a very powerful macro language, and they are accompanied by an extensive library of macros that greatly simplify programming for Assembler programmers. The SAVE macro stores the contents of registers 14 through 12, in the order 14, 15, 0, 1,...,12 into a save area provided by the caller with an address provided in register 13.

LR 12,15 copies the contents of register 15 to register 12. Another convention is that register 15 contains the address of the program, and register 14 contains a return address. Programs are expected to restore the contents of registers 2 through 14 before they exit to the address in reg 14. The SAVE macro does not use base/displacement instructions that use the addressing defined by the USING statement.

LA 15,SAVEAREA The very first thing a program must do is prepare a new save area if it calls another program. Though it's not obvious, the GET and PUT macros later in this program do just that. The LA instruction uses base register / displacement arithmetic to store the address of a new save area into register 15.

ST 15,8(,13) These instructions add the new save area to a potential chain of save
ST 13,4(,15) area. Notice we establish a forward pointer with the first ST instruction
LR 13,15 and a back pointer with the second ST instruction. The LR instruction actually completes the process. The 8(,13) string defines displacement 8 from register 13 with implied index register 0 (no index register, since register 0 cannot be used as a base register or an index register).

OPEN (INDCB,INPUT,OUTDCB,OUTPUT) OPEN is another macro; it completes preparation of data areas established by the DCB macro so they can be used for I/O.

LOOP GET INDCB This statement provides an instruction label LOOP and a call to the GET macro to retrieve the address of a record from the dataset specified through the INDCB DCB macro. The address is returned in register 1.

LR 0,1 This is pretty obvious: copy the contents of register 1 to register 0. The reason is much less obvious: the PUT macro will ultimately store a record address in register 0, but it will load the DCB address into register 1. If you specify PUT OUTDCB,(1), which seems to be legal, what will happen is PUT will load the DCB address into register 1, then copy that address to register 0. Oops.

PUT OUTDCB,(0) PUT is a macro, and it writes the record that has an address in register 0 to the dataset established by the DCB with label OUTDCB.

B LOOP More accurately, BC 15,LOOP. This branch instruction forms the I/O loop. Many instructions set a 2 bit condition code. The BC instruction provides a 4 bit mask, one bit for each possible condition code setting, according to these rulesWhen the mask bit for a specific condition code is on, the instruction branches, so a mask of 15 (all the bits are on) causes the instruction to branch if the condition code has any value. As a convenience for programmers the Assembler provides a number of "extended branch" operation codes. BE ..., for example, generates BC 8,... because instructions that perform a comparison set condition code 00 if the comparison is equal.

EOF CLOSE ... The I/O macros break the I/O loop and branch here when all the records in the input dataset have been processed. The CLOSE macro terminates I/O processing for the DCBs.

L 13,4(,13) This instruction loads the address of the previous save area, as set by the ST 13,4(,15) instruction near the start of the program.

RETURN (14,12),T,RC=0 RETURN is yet another macro. This one restores the registers saved by the SAVE macro from the save area register 13 points to. T directs the macro to set a flag that indicates the save area is no longer in use, and RC=0 directs the macro to store 0 in register 15 as a program return code.

SAVEAREA DC 18F'0' This instruction defines a 72 byte register save area used when this program calls another program.

INDCB DCB ... Another macro. The actual macro is very large, and it generates a very large (almost 100 bytes) table. DSORG=PS tells the macro to generate a DCB for a sequential dataset. MACRF=GL tells the macro that GET macros will be used with this DCB, and that the GET macros expect to return a record address rather than move the data record to a storage area specified by the GET macro. DDNAME=INPUT specifies the DD name assigned to the DD statement that defines the actual input dataset. EODAD=EOF provides the address where a GET macro will branch to after all input records have been read.

OUTDCB DCB ... DSORG=PS tells the macro to generate a DCB for a sequential dataset. MACRF=PM tells the macro that PUT macros will be used, and that the PUT macros will provide the address of a storage area where the record is located; the PUT macro will move the contents of this storage area to the dataset. DDNAME=OUTPUT specifies the DD name assigned to the DD statement that defines the actual output dataset. This DD statement must specify the RECFM, LRECL, and BLKSIZE of the dataset.

These users thanked the author steve-myers for the post:

lamino (Sat Apr 08, 2017 7:11 am)

oops - you missed the 'B LOOP' in your example!

NicC is right, there should be a B LOOP instruction just after the PUT OUTDCB,(0) line. Don't know how I missed it!

Christmas diversions!

A blooper?

Ho Ho Ho,

B LOOP added to the code. . .

Santa

Thank you, Santa!

The sample program provides an example of 2 of the 3 items of the textbook of issues in the initial post. The program (as corrected) contains 20 statements; 8 of these statements are macro calls for 7 different macros.

For the most part we, as programmers, should regard the contents of a macro expansion as a black box. IBM changes these from time to time, and I have seen programmers get into trouble because "I can do this better than IBM," and then get wiped out by a change.

Let's look at the copy loop.
I got to thinking, am I cheating here? I went to the "DFSMS Macro Instructions for Data Sets" manual where the PUT macro is formally documented, and it told me I was legal by the black box rule; the area address in a GET or PUT macro can be specified as an "RX-Type Address, (2-12), or (0)." An "RX-type address" is something that can be specified in an instruction like LA. "(2-12)" means a single register from 2 through 12 specified in parenthesis, like (2). So, by the black box rule and the manual what I did was 100% legal.