Please remember the following when entering commands:
You must insert commas to separate the individual operands of a command, e.g.
NCOPY TRANSFER-DIRECTION=TO,PARTNER-NAME=ZENTRALE,LOCAL-PARAMETER =...If quotes appear in a value assignment which is itself enclosed in quotes, they must be entered twice.
If there is no default value marked (by underscoring) for an operand, then it must be specified with a valid value (mandatory operand).
A distinction is made between positional operands and keyword operands. Positional operands are uniquely determined by their position in the command. Keyword operands are uniquely determined by their keyword, for example
TRANSFER-DIRECTION=...There are a number of considerations to be borne in mind when specifying such operands (see below).You can abbreviate your entries for operands, always ensuring that your entries retain their uniqueness. You can also use positional operands if you wish. Short forms and long forms can be mixed at will. Certain abbreviated forms of keywords and a number of positional operands are guaranteed for openFT. In the command representation the recommended abbreviation is shown in bold. This means that you will find these options unchanged in subsequent versions. This means, therefore, that to be “on the safe side”, you should form the habit of entering these commands in their abbreviated form. You should take particular care to use the guaranteed abbreviated forms in procedures, as this will ensure their continued executability in subsequent versions. The recommended abbreviations are used in the examples shown in this chapter. The possible abbreviations are listed for the individual command formats.
If a structure is preceded by an introductory operand value, then the opening parentheses must immediately follow this operand value. Example: *BS2000 is an introductory operand value in REM=*BS2000(...). Introductory operand values may be omitted if there is no risk of ambiguity.
The asterisk (*) that precedes constant operand values may be omitted if there is no risk of ambiguity. Please ensure that it is not a guaranteed abbreviation.
Comments may be included in FT user commands using the form "..."; the normal method of including comments in other TSO commands using the form /*...*/ is not permitted.
Please note that at the command interface, a c string must also be entered in the form C’...’ as otherwise (without the C) openFT would try to interpret the string as a fully qualified z/OS file name.
When you enter commands, the value assignments for the operands may be specified in positional form, in keyword form or in mixed form.
Please note the following:
When you perform value assignments in positional form, the first value is assigned to the first operand in the command, the second value to the second operand etc.
Values assigned in positional form are separated by commas. You must also enter a comma for each operand for which no value is assigned.
If two values are assigned to an operand, the last value to be assigned always applies. This also applies to parameter specifications in introductory operand values within the corresponding structure brackets. However, for the sake of clarity, double assignments should generally be avoided.
If you mix the different forms of operand value assignments (positional and keyword form), then you must observe the correct sequence. Note that you can start your input with positional operands and follow these with keyword operands but not the other way round!
Since there is a possibility that the sequence of operands may change in subsequent versions, only keyword operands should be used in procedures.
Continuation lines in FT commands in z/OS
An NCOPY command may consist of more than one line. When entering an NCOPY command with continuation lines at a TSO terminal, you simply continue writing on the next line on the screen.
If an NCOPY command with continuation lines is issued in a CLIST or REXX procedure or in a batch job as data for the IBM utility IKJEFT01, a hyphen "-" or a plus sign "+" is used as the continuation character. Refer to the IBM manuals for more details.
Differentiation between uppercase and lowercase letters
It may be important to differentiate between uppercase and lowercase letters in the parameters.
openFT handles the letters contained in the command string according to the following rules:
If the command string received by openFT contains only uppercase letters,
all letters outside the quotation marks remain uppercase;
letters enclosed in quotation marks are converted to lowercase.
alphanumerically specified FTAC transfer admissions are converted into lowercase letters
If any part of the command string received by openFT except the command name (NCOPY) contains a lowercase letter,
all letters outside the quotation marks are converted to uppercase;
alphanumerically specified FTAC transfer admissions are converted into lowercase letters
letters enclosed in quotation marks are not converted. These letters are retained in the form in which they were entered.
This has the following consequences for command input:
If parameter values consisting of uppercase letters (or of both uppercase and lowercase letters) enclosed in quotation marks are to be entered, you must ensure that
the command contains at least one lowercase letter (at any position except in the command name) and
openFT receives this command string in the same form (with no conversion).
This means that
In a CLIST or REXX procedure, you must use the statement CONTROL ASIS (or CONTROL NOCAPS) to ensure that the command string is not converted to uppercase before execution.
You can also use the menu interface (see chapter “Menu interface”) here, the relevant fields are not converted to uppercase (see the description of the input fields in the data entry panels).
When the TSO command processor is called in a batch job (IBM utility IKJEFT01, see manual "openFT (z/OS) - Installation and Operation"), letters are not converted to uppercase.
These rules also apply to the hexadecimal digits A through F in entries of the form <x-string m..n> which expect the partner system to be specified in uppercase letters.