Is it DFSORT or SyncSort?

DFSORT is a sort product sold by IBM. SYNCSORT is a competing product sold by Syncsort, Inc. CA-SORT is yet another sort product, sold by Computer Associates.  Most shops only buy one of these products.

All these are very similar products, they all do ‘basic sorting’ -though this might mean different thing to different users and serious-programmer might argue however let’s keep that discussion out of the the current post. In a very basic sense – all these products use similar commands. For most basic sort operations, the same commands will work in all the products. When you get into more advanced functions, there are some differences between them – some functions are only offered in one or the other product, and sometimes different syntax is used for the same operations. Though this margin seems to get shorten day by day.

From documentation per se, Syncsort’s documentation is available to the organizations who license the product. If your organization is licensed, all of the material is available for free from Syncsort support. There is NO documentation available for Syncsort’s SYNCTOOL. For DFSORT, on the other hand the documentation is available on IBM site.

However knoing all that or may after reading that this question comes up often: Is it DFSORT or SyncSort? which I’m using.  And as a programmer you should know about it.

To determine if you’re using DFSORT (from IBM) or Syncsort (from Syncsort, Inc), run the PGM=ICEMAN job below (or any PGM=SORT or PGM=ICEMAN job you like). Look at the SYSOUT output. If it has ICExxxs messages, you’re using DFSORT. If it has WERxxxs messages, you’re using Syncsort.
Code:

//STEP1 EXEC PGM=ICEMAN
//SYSOUT DD SYSOUT=*    
//SORTIN DD *
//SORTOUT DD DUMMY
//SYSIN DD *
SORT FIELDS=COPY
/*
//*

For example, if you’re using DFSORT the first two messages you’ll get are:

ICE143I 0 BLOCKSET     COPY  TECHNIQUE SELECTED
ICE000I 1 - CONTROL STATEMENTS FOR 5740-SM1, DFSORT REL  ...