ISPF Tips.

[Anuj Dhawan]

18. To show 'PF Keys' at bottom of ISPF panel(s) - use command ‘PFSHOW ON’. To hide(remove) them, issue ‘PFSHOW OFF’.

There is another extension of PFSHOW is - PFSHOW TAILOR - it displays a panel that lets you specify the set of function keys (primary, alternate, or all) for which definitions are to be displayed and the number of keys per line to display in each function key definition line.

If you use PFSHOW, it toggles through the different forms of the function key area. The first time you enter the PFSHOW command (without parameters), the long form of the function key area is displayed. If you enter the command again, the short form is displayed. If you enter the command once again, the keys are removed from the display. Therefore, if you continue to enter the command, the different choices are toggled.

[Anuj Dhawan]

19. While you're in an EDIT mode and want to identify the changes that have been done since the last SAVE command was issued - issue “COMPARE SESSION” on the command line and take it from there.

[Anuj Dhawan]

20. Find last occurrence of string "aaa":

The below command, when issued on command line, finds last occurrence of string aaa.

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F LAST aaa

Again, note that the arguments are not positional and may be specified in any order desired - that means, “F LAST aaa” and “F aaa LAST” will behave same.

[Anuj Dhawan]

21. Finds first occurrence of string aaa within the lines labeled:

The below command, when issued on command line, Finds first occurrence of string aaa within the lines labeled .X and .Y.

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F aaa X. Y.

Note that the arguments are not positional and may be specified in any order desired - that means, “F X. Y. aaa” and “F aaa X. Y.” will behave same.

[Anuj Dhawan]

22. Find the previous occurrence of string "aaa":

The below command, when issued on command line, finds the previous occurrence of string "aaa".

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F PREV aaa

It should be noted that the arguments are not positional and may be specified in any order desired - that means, “F PREV aaa” and “F aaa PREV” will behave same.

[Anuj Dhawan]

23. Find hexadecimal values using ISPF commands :

The below command, when issued on command line, finds hexadecimal value ‘123C’

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F X'123C'

[Anjali Chopra]

Thanks for sharing all these, they're very helpful!

[Anuj Dhawan]

Glad we had been helpful - and yup, Thanks for the feedback!

[Anuj Dhawan]

24. Following command will change all non-space characters to spaces in columns 15 through 18. One can amend it for your own requirement, as required:

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C P'^' ' ' 15 18 ALL

[Anuj Dhawan]

25. Following command changes all lower-case characters into upper case:

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C P'<' P'>' ALL

One can also use the line command ‘LC’ or ‘UC’, or as block commands ‘LCC’ and ‘UCC’ for this very purpose.

[Anuj Dhawan]

26. Following command changes the data to spaces between column 10 through 16. One can amend it as per his need:

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C P'=' ' ' 10 16 ALL

[Anuj Dhawan]

27. Any command entered in the COMMAND LINE disappears after the successful execution of its intended function. If you want to repeat the same command , you got to re-type it or use some PF key to retrieve the last command entered.

However, if you precede the commands with '&", the command entered will not disappear and stay on the screen. For example:

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COMMAND ===> &C 'TESTPROG' 'PRODPROG'      SCROLL ===> CSR 
****** ************************ TOP OF DATA ************** 
000001 IDENTIFICATION DIVISION. 
000002 PROGRAM-ID. TESTPROG. 
000003 DATE-WRITTEN. NOV 2013.
'
'

After the execution of the command, the below command stays on the screen. This way you can entering the same command or modifying the command a little and using it multiple times.

[zprogrammer]

28.There might be a scenario where you type in lot of things in view mode but later realise you need to save them.

There are two ways of saving the modified data in view mode

1.You could either CUT the data and come back in edit mode and paste and save it or

2.Use this command on command line

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REPL .ZF .ZL 'PS FILE NAME'

OR

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REPL .ZF .ZL <PDS MEMBER NAME>

[zprogrammer]

29.How to tag or comment a group of continuous data

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****** ***************************** Top of Data ******************************
000100 Pandora
000200 Testing
000300 something
****** **************************** Bottom of Data ****************************

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****** ***************************** Top of Data ******************************
C'''''            ' PADDED '
OO     Pandora
       Testing
OO     something
****** **************************** Bottom of Data ****************************

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****** ***************************** Top of Data ******************************
000010            ' PADDED '
000100 Pandora    ' PADDED '
000200 Testing    ' PADDED '
000300 something  ' PADDED '
****** **************************** Bottom of Data ****************************

Also This command you can use to comment a section or Para in cobol rather copy/paste

[zprogrammer]

30.Like REPL there is also CREATE

You could use as

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CRE .ZF .ZL <member name>

Or

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CRE .ZF .ZL 'PS file name'

[zprogrammer]

31.Text Flow command TF

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****** ***************************** Top of Data ******************************
000100 TEST1,
000200 TEST2,
000300 TEST3,
000400 TEST4,
000500 TEST5,
000600 TEST6,
****** **************************** Bottom of Data ****************************

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****** ***************************** Top of Data ******************************
TF30   TEST1,
000200 TEST2,
000300 TEST3,
000400 TEST4,
000500 TEST5,
000600 TEST6,
****** **************************** Bottom of Data ****************************

Output

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****** ***************************** Top of Data ******************************
000100 TEST1, TEST2, TEST3, TEST4,
000200 TEST5, TEST6,
****** **************************** Bottom of Data ****************************

[Quasar Chunawala]

32. MOVE/COPY a line to multiple destinations(zOS 1.10 and above)
When you would like to MOVE/COPY a source line to multiple destination lines, you can suffix K to the A,B,O and OO commands. For example, to copy (CC) a block of COBOL code to multiple target destinations, you'd type AK, AK, AK,... line commands followed by A line command on the final destination.

Hiding excluded lines(zOS 1.6 and above)
While preparing a multi-step job or a large JCL, like a LOAD job, you may want to exclude lines and hide them as well. ISPF also has the HIDE command to hide excluded lines.

[enrico-sorichetti]

the TF command is one of the most unfriendly ones
NO permanent damage will be done ...
but most of the times the unwary user will have to CANCEL the edit session and start over again
if somebody feels that it is necessary to use it TURN RECOVERY ON

and the acronym TF does not mean Text Formatting, but Text Flow :ugeek:

z/OS V1R12.0 ISPF Edit and Edit Macros SC34-4820-09.
The TF (text flow) line command restructures paragraphs. This is sometimes necessary after deletions, ...

[zprogrammer]

Thanks Enrico for the eye opener .. I have editted my post

[zprogrammer]

33.

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F ALL P'@'

To Find all Alphabetic characters