The public UUCP directory is the default destination for files that have been transferred to the local system from other systems. Additionally, if a remote user has read access to the local system, by default the directory he can read from is the public directory. The files remain in the public directory until users claim them.

Typically, users on the local system have read access to the public directory (and sometimes write and execute access as well). So users can access files in the public directory using normal file access methods (for example, cp, cat, or vi)—or for files sent by uuto, they can use uupick to handle them. The uuto command, a simplified method of using uucp, uses the receive subdirectory of the public directory as its target. Within that subdirectory, each user on the local system has a subdirectory.

The public UUCP directory is called /usr/spool/uucppublic, and it is created when the BPXISMKD job is run as part of the z/OS installation. (Other UUCP systems or operating systems might use different names for the public directory.) Within the public directory, UUCP creates a subdirectory for each remote system that sends files to the local system.

As of z/OS® V1R13, /usr/spool is configured as a symbolic link to /var/spool. The public UUCP directory must reside in the /var directory and the subdirectories created by UUCP are created in /var/uucppublic. See Customizing the cron, uucp, and mail utilities for a read-only root file system for more information.

To make file transfers easier, you can use a special character in path names for the public UUCP directory: when tilde ( ˜) is written as the first directory in a destination path name, the ˜/ stands for the public UUCP directory. You can specify the public UUCP directory with the path name ˜/. The public UUCP directory is defined as the home directory of the user uucp, so you can also specify it as ˜uucp.