Relationship to other parameters

Only the following JCL parameters can be used with the PATH parameter:

BLKSIZE
BUFNO
DSNTYPE=PIPE
DUMMY
FILEDATA
LRECL
NCP
PATHDISP
PATHMODE
PATHOPTS
RECFM
TERM

Do not code PATHDISP, PATHMODE, or PATHOPTS on a DD statement without a PATH parameter.

Do not code a PATH parameter on the following DD statements:

JOBLIB
STEPLIB
SYSABEND
SYSMDUMP
SYSUDUMP

Coding the PATH parameter is useful only when the following is true:

The program being run has been coded to recognize and process the PATH specification. Programs designed to use such DD statements must either:
- Use dynamic allocation information retrieval to obtain the information specified for PATH, PATHOPTS, and PATHMODE, and pass it to the open() callable service. See z/OS V2R2.0 UNIX System Services User's Guide for details on using open().
- Use the C/370™ fopen(//dd: ) function. fopen() handles the differences between DD statements with PATH and DSN specified. See z/OS V2R2.0 UNIX System Services User's Guide for details on using fopen().

If:

You specify either:
- OCREAT alone
  or:
- Both OCREAT and OEXCL
on the PATHOPTS parameter,
And if:
The file does not exist,

Then MVS™ performs an open() function. The options from PATHOPTS, the pathname from the PATH parameter, and the options from PATHMODE (if specified) are used in the open(). MVS uses the close() function to close the file before the application program receives control.

For status group options other than OCREAT and OEXCL, the description in this documentation assumes that the application passes the subparameters to the open() function without modification. That is, this application uses dynamic allocation information retrieval (the DYNALLOC macro) to retrieve the values specified for PATHOPTS and passes the values to the open() function. The application program can ignore or modify the information specified in the JCL.