Copying and moving data

While you are editing, you can copy or move another data set, member, or z/OS® UNIX file into the current data by using the COPY or MOVE primary commands. The process of moving and copying data is very similar. However, remember that when you move data, the original information no longer exists in the member, data set, or file that it is being moved from.

When moving or copying large data sets, you can reduce the processing time significantly by specifying NUMBER OFF before the operation and NUMBER ON afterwards.

This topic explains how to use the COPY and MOVE primary commands. See C—Copy Lines and M—Move Lines for information about the line commands.

The two ways to perform a move or copy operation are:

You can type either COPY or MOVE, followed by name and either AFTER label or BEFORE label, where name is the name of the member, data set, or z/OS file to be copied or moved and label is a label that is defined in the line command field. The label can be defined by PDF, such as .ZFIRST for the first line of data, or it can be one that you have defined. If you omit the label, you can use the A (after) or B (before) line command to specify where the information is to go. When you press Enter, the member is copied or moved. See COPY—Copy Data and MOVE—Move Data for the complete syntax of the commands.
If you omit the member name, data set name, or z/OS file, and just type the command and the destination of the operation (using either the AFTER label or BEFORE label operand or the A or B line command), the editor displays a panel on which you can specify the name of the member, data set, or z/OS UNIX file to be copied or moved. The only difference between the Edit Move and Edit Copy panels is that with Copy, you can specify the number of lines you want copied.

Note: When using the ASCII (or UTF-8) edit facility with a z/OS UNIX file and the COPY or MOVE command is issued specifying another z/OS UNIX file as the source, ISPF checks if the CCSID of the source file is set to 819 (1208 for UTF-8). If so, ISPF assumes it contains ASCII (or UTF-8) data. This means when ISPF reads the source file, the data is split into records by using the ASCII (and UTF-8) linefeed character (X'0A') and the ASCII (and UTF-8) carriage return character (X'0D') as the record delimiter. For information on the ASCII edit facility, see Working with ASCII data. For information on the UTF-8 edit facility, see Working with UTF-8 data.