IBM Mainframe Forum

[Duffy]

Greetings,

We are a software developer for IBM Mainframe. Thinking of writing some new code in C/C++. Looked on our devlopment machine which is Z/OS 1.4 and can find no sample compile JCL etc. Asked a customer if he had C/C++ runtime support and he asked me where to look! (not a good sign).

Does anyone know is C/C++ is available on most mainframes?? If so is there a certain release foward that it can be found on?? Where is compile sample, link, etc??

Thanks!

Duffy

[steve-myers]

C/C++ is provided with z/OS, as is the run time. I'm not as comfortable with the stability of the C++ runtime; IBM appears to keep changing the feature set, but the C runtime should be extremely stable.

FWIW, your z/OS development environment is ancient history. The current z/OS is 1.11, with 1.12 shipping in September. You really should upgrade.

The other mainframe issue is there are really 2, possibly 3, environments you should think about.

• Regular batch / TSO. This environment is EBCDIC character set based, and the I/O runtime is mapped, generally pretty will, into z/OS data set structures.
• UNIX System Services environment. This environment is also EBCDIC, but it has a file system very much like the UNIX environment you're probably familiar with.
• Mainframe LINUX. This is an ASCII environment, but it sits off in its little corner with very limited access to z/OS data, both UNIX System Services data as well as regular z/OS data. This means very limited access to z/OS DB2 or IMS type data, and you can't use the extremely effective z/OS tools like sort.

[NicC]

Back about 1997 or so I was interviewed by IBM for a position as a C programmer coding updates to MQ - I should have tried to get the job! Anyway, at least some of the middleware is written in C. Do not know about applications. IBM might be able to give you some pointers.

[MrSpock]

Isn't all of the new stuff pretty much done exclusively with Java or J2EE these days? I don't recall that C/C++ ever really took off outside of the Unix world ...

[steve-myers]

IBM has done quite a lot in mainframe C, though it's hard to spot unless you check the load modules. I think much of mainframe DB2 is C, and i wouldn't be surprised if much of the Binder is C.

C is (or at least it used to be) popular in PC applications, so I wouldn't say its use is restricted to Unix.

[dick scherrer]

Hello,

As C begat C++, C++ begat C# (c-sharp). Several win-based developers i've worked with greatly prefer Visual C# to other C implementations as well as over Visual Basic. Visual Studio supports them both quite well.

[Robert Sample]

The IBM link is http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/czos/
which says

z/OS XL C/C++ compiler is an optional priced feature of the z/OS operating system

so it is not free -- but definitely available. I don't think it is widely used but I'm sure there are some applications using it.

[Greenhouse]

The IBM link is http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/czos/
which says

z/OS XL C/C++ compiler is an optional priced feature of the z/OS operating system

so it is not free -- but definitely available. I don't think it is widely used but I'm sure there are some applications using it.

The topic is not about C/C++ compiler but about C/C++ runtime support

[NicC]

It is indeed about C/C++ compiler as the OP is considering developing in C or C++ for which he needs a compiler. Once compiled and linked you still need runtime support so that is relevant as well.

[Greenhouse]

Greetings,
Asked a customer if he had C/C++ runtime support and he asked me where to look! (not a good sign).
Duffy

To run C/C++ load module you need to have these libs:
LIBPRFX.SCEERUN2
LIBPRFX.SCEERUN
CLBPRFX.SCLBDLL
CLBPRFX.SCLBDLL2