Multisegment command input

Multisegment commands require an EOS (end-of-segment) indicator for all segments preceding the last segment, and an EOM (end-of-message) indicator for the last segment.

The EOS and EOM will vary, depending on the type of terminal entering the command. For example, on the system console, EOS is indicated by the ENTER key and EOM is indicated by entering a period followed by the ENTER key.

The following are multisegment commands:

/ALLOCATE
/BROADCAST
/CHANGE
/ERESTART
/LOOPTEST
/OPNDST
/RMxxxxxx
/SSR

The period is used both as a delimiter for comments on IMS™ commands and as an EOM indicator for some terminal types. The following four examples illustrate the use of the period in both contexts.

Start of change If support for special characters is enabled in RACF and the last parameter of the /OPNDST command is a password, you must add a space before the period. End of change

Example 1 for multisegment commands

System console entry:

24,/BRO MASTER. END OF DAY MESSAGE
25,I AM GOING HOME.  PLEASE TAKE OVER.

Response on master terminal:

I AM GOING HOME.  PLEASE TAKE OVER.

Explanation: The first input segment (reply 24) contains only the command and consists of a comment (END OF DAY MESSAGE) separated from the command itself (BRO MASTER) by a period. The second input segment (reply 25) consists of the data to be broadcast. The first period in segment 2 is part of the data and the second period in segment 2 is the EOM indicator for the system console.

Example 2 for multisegment commands

System console entry:

26,/CHANGE DIRECT
27,ORY MFS. MODIFICATION.

Explanation: MODIFICATION in segment 2 is a comment and is separated from the command by the first period. The second period in segment 2 is the EOM indicator for the system console.

The above 2 segments are combined and the following is input to the command processor:

/CHANGE DIRECTORY MFS. MODIFICATION

Example 3 for multisegment commands

System console entry:

28,/CHANGE LINK 1
29,2 3 FORCSESS.

Explanation: Certain forms of reply to the system console outstanding reply can compress out leading blanks from input segments. In example three, the command processed by the ⁄CHANGE command processor would be: ⁄CHANGE LINK 12 3 FORCSESS. To obtain the desired command, ⁄CHANGE LINK 1 2 3 FORCSESS, one of the following forms of reply could be used:

R 29,'/CHANGE LINK 1'
R 30,' 2 3 FORCSESS.'

29,/CHANGE LINK 1
30, 2 3 FORCSESS

Example 4 for multisegment commands

LU2 or 3270 Display Terminal entry:

/FORMAT DFSM04
/BRO LTERM WTOR (eos)
this is segment 1 (eos)
this is segment 2 (eos)
this is segment 3 (eom)

Explanation: The remote terminal is first formatted by the/FORMAT command, where default format DFSMO4 supports the input of 4 segments.

For LU2 and 3270 display terminals, enter a /FORMAT DFSM04 command before entering the multisegment command.