IBM Mainframe Forum

Hi everyone,
Why should i use AS in my select statement for ESDS physical file?


kind Regards
gyaa

What do the manuals tell you about it? Have you tried removing "AS-"?

Hi,
I Removed AS and wrote a code it shows an abend sco4.


Kind regards
gyaa

What did the manuals tell you about it?

You need to research before you come here with questions. You have colleagues or a Trainer. You have the manuals. You have the internet. On top of that, you can do, as you now did, a little program to try something out.

If you can start trying to "learn how to learn about mainframe stuff" you'll find it is invaluable in your future career. Just giving up answers to you will be less valuable to you.

The manual not only tells you what you CAN do, it also tells you what you MUST do. For example, you cannot run a COBOL program without one of the four divisions. And if you are using a VSAM ESDS file, you cannot omit the AS- on the ASSIGN statement.

Update: actually, after checking the manual (thanks BillyBoyo for the suggestion), the ONLY required DIVISION is IDENTIFICATION. If your program is not using any files or special characters, you can get by without the ENVIRONMENT DIVSIION. There's not much use, however, for a program missing the DATA DIVISION or PROCEDURE DIVISION (other than listing all the error messages, of course).