The ACTION attribute

The CMDACT tag has a required attribute, ACTION, which you use to specify the ISPF command action. Here is a list of ISPF command actions you can assign. You can also assign some of the ISPF-provided system commands listed in CMDACT (Command Action), and you can specify command actions dynamically at run time as discussed in Specifying command actions dynamically.

ALIAS: To allow a command to have an alternate name, such as using QUIT as an alias for EXIT.
PASSTHRU: To pass the command to the application. The internal-command-name and any command parameters are passed to the dialog in the ISPF ZCMD system variable.
SETVERB: To pass the command to the application. The internal-command-name is passed to the dialog in the ZVERB system variable, and the parameters (if any) are passed to the dialog in the ZCMD system variable.

The ALIAS command action provides you with a way to define synonyms for commands. The internal-command-name you define for the ALIAS attribute value defines the command to be processed. You must enclose the keyword ALIAS, the internal-command-name, and any optional parameters within quotes.

When you define an ALIAS command action, you must code that command's CMD and CMDACT tags before the command the ALIAS represents. ISPF first searches the application-defined commands, and then the ISPF system commands. It must locate the ALIAS definition before the aliased command.

Here is an example where we've added the commands PREV and NEXT to the application command table. We want "PREV" and "NEXT" to be aliases for the ISPF system commands BACKWARD and FORWARD. Because the BACKWARD and FORWARD commands are provided by ISPF, we do not need to define them in the application command table. ISPF locates the aliases before the ISPF system commands they refer to.

Additionally, this example shows the CMDACT for the SEND command set to PASSTHRU, because we want the application program to process the SEND command.

<cmdtbl applid=brws>
  <cmd name=quit>quit
    <cmdact action='alias exit'>
  <cmd name=send>send
    <cmdact action=passthru>
  <cmd name=prev>
    <cmdact action='alias backward'>
  <cmd name=next>
    <cmdact action='alias forward'>
</cmdtbl>