The reports have a width less than 80 characters to make it easy to review them from the terminal. In general, the output lines within a report are arranged hierarchically with lower levels of detail being progressively indented to the right. Thus, the sum of the values at a given level is the value of the line above and to the left. The exceptions to this are the Error and Anomaly Reports that contain a report total at the same indentation as the next subordinate level.

The text of the report lines is also arranged hierarchically in the sense that the text of a lower level describes a more specific condition within the scope described at the higher levels. The lowest level detail lines also contain message identifiers that should appear in the log data set for error or anomaly conditions. The descriptive phrase used in a detail report lines is expanded in the explanation of the companion message. The messages issued by ICFRU are described in z/OS MVS System Messages, Vol 4 (CBD-DMO) The text of the summary lines is explained in the following discussion of the individual reports.

For complete examples see Reports from Record Analysis and Processing. In this section we will repeat various lines from these examples with explanatory notes.