Including, omitting, and saving discards

In Including or omitting records, you learned how to use the INCLUDE and OMIT statements to select only a subset of the input records for sorting, copying or merging. You can also select subsets of records for your individual OUTFIL output data sets in the same way using the INCLUDE and OMIT parameters. Different INCLUDE or OMIT parameters can be used for different OUTFIL statements.

All of the logical expressions that are valid for the COND parameter of the INCLUDE and OMIT statements are also valid for the INCLUDE and OMIT parameters of OUTFIL. However, you cannot specify the FORMAT parameter with the OUTFIL statement as you can with the INCLUDE and OMIT statements. VB data set considerations for the INCLUDE and OMIT statements also apply to the INCLUDE and OMIT parameters.

Suppose you wanted to sort the bookstore data set by title, and create separate output data sets for the English, History and Psychology departments. You could use the following OUTFIL statements to create these three output data sets:

  SORT FIELDS=(1,75,CH,A)
  OUTFIL FNAMES=ENGLOUT,INCLUDE=(110,5,CH,EQ,C'ENGL')
  OUTFIL FNAMES=HISTOUT,INCLUDE=(110,5,CH,EQ,C'HIST')
  OUTFIL FNAMES=PSYCHOUT,INCLUDE=(110,5,CH,EQ,C'PSYCH')

The SORT statement sorts the input records by the title field.

The first OUTFIL statement writes the records for the English department to the ENGLOUT data set. The result is shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Output records in ENGLOUT data set
Book Title	Course Department
1 75	110 114
EDITING SOFTWARE MANUALS INKLINGS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF YOUNG POETS MODERN ANTHOLOGY OF WOMEN POETS SHORT STORIES AND TALL TALES THE COMPLETE PROOFREADER	ENGL ENGL ENGL ENGL ENGL

The second OUTFIL statement writes the records for the History department to the HISTOUT data set. The result is shown in Table 2.

Table 2. Output records in HISTOUT data set
Book Title	Course Department
1 75	110 114
CRISES OF THE MIDDLE AGES EIGHTEENTH CENTURY EUROPE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION	HIST HIST HIST

The third OUTFIL statement writes the records for the Psychology department to the PYSCHOUT data set. The result is shown in Table 3.

Table 3. Output records in PSYCHOUT data set
Book Title	Course Department
1 75	110 114
ADVANCED TOPICS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY	PSYCH PSYCH

The previous example creates output data sets for the English, History and Psychology department's books. If you wanted to create an additional output data set (RESTOUT) containing the rest of the books, you could use the following statements:

  SORT FIELDS=(1,75,CH,A)
  OUTFIL FNAMES=ENGLOUT,INCLUDE=(110,5,CH,EQ,C'ENGL')
  OUTFIL FNAMES=HISTOUT,INCLUDE=(110,5,CH,EQ,C'HIST')
  OUTFIL FNAMES=PSYCHOUT,INCLUDE=(110,5,CH,EQ,C'PSYCH')
  OUTFIL FNAMES=RESTOUT,
    INCLUDE=(110,5,CH,NE,C'ENGL',AND,
             110,5,CH,NE,C'HIST',AND,
             110,5,CH,NE,C'PSYCH')

This is not too bad for only three departments, but the INCLUDE statement for RESTOUT would get more involved as the number of departments increased.

DFSORT's SAVE parameter gives you an easy way to keep the records discarded by a group of OUTFIL statements. The SAVE parameter selects records for its OUTFIL data set that are not selected for any other OUTFIL data set as a result of the INCLUDE, OMIT, ACCEPT, STARTREC, ENDREC or SAMPLE parameters. So instead of the preceding statements, you could use the following statements to accomplish the same thing

  SORT FIELDS=(1,75,CH,A)
  OUTFIL FNAMES=ENGLOUT,INCLUDE=(110,5,CH,EQ,C'ENGL')
  OUTFIL FNAMES=HISTOUT,INCLUDE=(110,5,CH,EQ,C'HIST')
  OUTFIL FNAMES=PSYCHOUT,INCLUDE=(110,5,CH,EQ,C'PSYCH')
  OUTFIL FNAMES=RESTOUT,SAVE

The fourth OUTFIL statement writes the records not used for English, History or Psychology to the RESTOUT data set. The result is shown in Table 4.

Table 4. Output records in RESTOUT data set
Book Title	Course Department
1 75	110 114
COMPUTER LANGUAGES COMPUTERS: AN INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION TO BIOLOGY LIVING WELL ON A SMALL BUDGET NUMBERING SYSTEMS PICK'S POCKET DICTIONARY STRATEGIC MARKETING SUPPLYING THE DEMAND SYSTEM PROGRAMMING VIDEO GAME DESIGN	COMP COMP BIOL COMP BUSIN BUSIN COMP COMP

So far
So far, you have learned how to create multiple identical copies of an input data set; select and sample input records by relative record number for output; and include, omit or save selected input records for output. Next, you will learn about reformatting, repeating, and splitting records with OUTFIL.