If processing of a file is not terminated normally (e.g. because the job is aborted as the result of a system crash or because the job is suspended due to memory saturation and not reactivated before the system is closed down), the contents of the file may become inaccessible for future processing.
Possible consequences of abnormal termination of file processing:
a file lock is not cleared
the file contents and the catalog entry do not match (e.g. last-page pointer)
the index and data sections of an ISAM file are inconsistent.
The user can reconstruct such files with the aid of the VERIF macro or the REPAIR-DISK-FILE command.
If a program attempts to access a destroyed or locked file, an error routine containing a VERIF macro can be activated via the EXLST exit OPENC (see the EXLST macro).
The user can use FSTAT (STATE=NOCLOS operand) or the SHOW-FILE-ATTRIBUTES command (STATUS=*PAR(CLOSED-OUTPUT=*NO) operand) to check whether any files are still open.