An application that uses ICQGCL00 specifies, as input parameters, the criteria to be used in searching the user catalog. The list of the names of the data sets that match the searched criteria are returned to the application in an ISPF table. If the table specified by the application does not exist, ICQGCL00 creates a temporary table. If the table does exist, and is sorted, the data sets are added to the table in sorted order. However, if the existing table is not sorted, ICQGCL00 adds the data set names to the bottom of the table. Figure 1 shows the interaction between an application program and ICQGCL00.

Figure 1. Using ICQGCL00 to Return a List of Data Set Names

A fully-qualified data set name has three fields: a user ID (or prefix), a first-level qualifier (or data set name) and a second-level qualifier (or descriptive qualifier). Search criteria can be specified for each field of a data set name. For example, an application can specify that all data set names with a user ID of MYDATA, a first-level qualifier beginning with the characters ICQ, and a second-level qualifier of CLIST be returned.

The input parameters limit the search. For example, they can specify that only those data set names that have exactly two qualifiers following the user ID be returned.