Testing condition tokens for equivalence

Two condition tokens are equivalent if they represent the same type of condition, even if not necessarily the same instance of the condition. For example, you could have two occurrences of an out-of-storage condition. Though equivalent conditions, they are not necessarily equal because they occur in different locations in your program.

To determine whether two condition tokens are equivalent, compare the first 8 bytes of each condition token to one another. These bytes are static and do not change depending on the given instance of the condition.

You might want to check for equivalence when writing a message about a type of condition that occurs in your application or when registering a condition handling routine to respond to a given type of condition.

There are two ways to check for equivalent condition tokens:

You can break down the condition token by coding it as a structure and looking at its individual components, or you can call the CEEDCOD (decompose condition token) service to break down the condition token. See z/OS Language Environment Programming Reference for more information about the CEEDCOD service.
The easiest way to test for equivalence is to compare the value returned in fc with the symbolic feedback code for the condition you are interested in handling. Symbolic feedback codes represent only the first 8 bytes of a 12-byte condition token. See Using symbolic feedback codes for details.