Users issue the PRINTDS command to print sequential data sets, members of a partitioned data set (PDS), or an entire PDS. They can print data sets that contain Document Composition Facility (DCF) data. Users can also route the command's output to a remote workstation or a user at a specific remote workstation, or to a data set. Using PRINTDS, users can specify a variety of formatting options. For more information about using PRINTDS, see . For information about PRINTDS and its operands, see .

TSO/E provides an initialization exit and a termination exit for the PRINTDS command. You can use the exits to customize PRINTDS processing for your users. The initialization exit receives control before the PRINTDS command processor invokes the parse service routine to parse the command. The termination exit receives control just before the PRINTDS command processor completes processing. If the initialization exit returns successfully to PRINTDS and PRINTDS processing itself abends, the PRINTDS command processor invokes the termination exit before it terminates.

You can use the initialization exit to restrict certain users from using the PRINTDS command, change the operands that users specify on the command, and change the values of PRINTDS operands that have fixed default values. For more information about the operands the initialization exit can change, see Programming considerations.

You can use the termination exit to perform clean-up or special processing prior to PRINTDS completion. Depending on the processing your initialization exit performs, you may not need a corresponding termination exit.