Passing environment variables to BPXBATCH

When you are using BPXBATCH to run a program, you typically pass the program a file that sets the environment variables. If you do not pass an environment variable file when running a program with BPXBATCH, or if the HOME and LOGNAME variables are not set in the environment variable file, those two variables are set from your logon RACF® profile. LOGNAME is set to the user name, and HOME is set to the initial working directory from the RACF profile.

Note: When using BPXBATCH with the SH option (SH is the default), environment variables specified in the STDENV DD are overridden by those specified in /etc/profile and .profile (which overrides /etc/profile). This is because SH causes BPXBATCH to execute a login shell that runs the /etc/profile script and runs the user's .profile.

To pass environment variables to BPXBATCH, you define a file containing the variable definitions and allocate it to the STDENV ddname. The file can be one of the following:

A z/OS UNIX file identified with the ddname STDENV
An MVS™ data set identified with the ddname STDENV