Interpreting runtime messages

Runtime messages are designed to provide information about conditions and possible solutions to errors that occur in your routine. Language Environment common routines and language-specific runtime routines issue runtime messages. All runtime messages in Language Environment are comprised of the following:

A 3-character facility ID used by all messages generated under Language Environment or a particular Language Environment-conforming product. This prefix indicates the Language Environment component that generated the message, and is also the facility ID in the condition token. Language Environment uses the ID of the condition token to write the message associated with the condition to MSGFILE. For more information about the condition token, see Using condition tokens.
A message number that identifies the message associated with the condition.
A severity level that indicates the severity of the condition that was raised.

The format of every runtime message is FFFnnnnx

FFF

Represents the facility ID. In z/OS Language Environment, the possible facility IDs assigned by IBM® are:

CEE: Language Environment common library
EDC: C language-specific library
FOR: Fortran language-specific library
IGZ: COBOL language-specific library
IBM: PL/I language-specific library

nnnn

Represents the message number.

x

Represents the severity code. This character indicates the level of severity (1, 2, 3, or 4) of the message.

Table 1 lists the severity codes, corresponding severity levels, explanations of the severity codes, and the default actions taken if conditions corresponding to each level of severity are unhandled.

Table 1. Severity codes for Language Environment runtime messages
Severity code	Level of severity	Explanation	Default action if condition unhandled
I	0	An informational message (or, if the entire token is zero, no information).	No message issued.
W	1	A warning message; service completed, probably successfully.	No message issued, except in COBOL. Processing continues for all languages.
E	2	Error detected, correction attempted, service completed, perhaps successfully.	Issues message and terminates thread.
S	3	Severe error detected, service incomplete with possible side effects.	Issues message and terminates thread.
C	4	Critical error detected, service incomplete with condition signaled.	Issues message and terminates thread.

Language Environment messages can appear even though you made no explicit calls to Language Environment services. C, COBOL, and PL/I runtime library routines commonly use the Language Environment services, so you might receive Language Environment messages even when the application routine does not directly call Language Environment services.

Some Language Environment conditions have qualifying data associated with the instance specific information (ISI) for the condition. For more information about qualifying data, see q_data structure for abends.