Alias names (see the “DMS” manual [2]) are permitted in ARCHIVE. An alias name is virtually any name which the user may use instead of the actual file name. The relationships between the alias names and the file names are defined in the alias catalog.
An alias name is accepted wherever a file name is selected with the FILES NAME= or INQUIRE FILES= statement or with the DIRECTORY operand.
Internally, ARCHIVE uses only file names, not alias names. For this reason, all messages and listings contain only file names. Moreover, the ARCHIVE statement is rejected with message ARC0252 in CATID=NO mode, if ACS converts an alias name specified by the user into a file name with a catalog ID.
If an alias name is selected in an EXPORT or SAVE statement, the save file is addressed with its file name.
If an alias name is selected in a LIST, IMPORT, INQUIRE or RESTORE statement, the corresponding file name is used to search the work file (save file or directory file).
If no file is explicitly selected (e.g. FILES statement without the NAME operand), the file name is processed directly. For this reason, it is not possible to implicitly rename a file with the alias mechanism during an IMPORT or RESTORE operation.
The user should avoid the ACS entry COMPLETE-ALIAS-NAMES=ALLOWED because if complete alias names (with catalog ID and user ID) are allowed, multiple file name replacements may occur which will lead to unpredictable ARCHIVE results.