Templates

Edit copy provides a way of bringing in a member name into the one you are editing. This saves typing by using pre-written outlines of commonly used code. The copy process is, however, not as neat as we would like if you want to copy from a dataset other than the one being edited; you have to type Copy, then the name of the dataset, and then select the member you want. It's only if the member you want is in the dataset you happen to be editing that you can type

       COPY membername

on the command line. With DDF you can sometimes code it this way even if what you want is on a different dataset.

This is best illustrated by a walk-through of what an experienced DDF user might do and what they would see on the way. On the DDF command line, our expert types TEMPL to show the separate datasets (TEMPLATES) used to hold Rexx, JCL, etc fragments. These datasets are under our expert's control.

C Dataset name                          DDF type
   <hlq>.TEMPLATE.JCL               J
   <hlq>.TEMPLATE.REXX              R
   <hlq>.TEMPLATE.CLIST             C

I (insert) D (delete) R (repeat) prefix commands are used to control the list. <hlq> is the high-level qualifer for your code fragment datasets. Note that the word TEMPLATE is not required but it might be useful as a standard. The DDF screen looks like this:

Show list > ABC                                              <
Cmd  Member   Text                     Description   Show Type
     FRED     PROJ1.QUAL2.QUAL3.QUAL4                ABC   J
              PROJ1.LEVEL2.QUAL3.QUAL4               ABC   R

When fred is edited, DDF will see it's Type J, which is associated with a dataset called <hlq>.TEMPLATE.JCL, The template dataset will be concatenated after the dataset being edited. This means that during the edit of FRED our expert could type (for example) COPY JOBCARD and Edit will attempt to get it either from the dataset being edited or the template. The point is that all datasets given type J will have the template dataset concatentated in this way, enabling the simplifed DDF copy feature for any number of datasets

On taking a DDF member list of PROJ1.QUAL2.QUAL3.QUAL4 above, the template dataset will again be concatentated, giving a list of the combined members of the two datasets. For this reason it's probably best to give all template members names beginning with Z; this will ensure that they sort to the end of the list. Note that you will be able to distinguish between members on the main and template dataset by their level numbers (1 and 2, respectively).

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Last updated: 21 Jan 2002