CLIST data sets and libraries

CLISTs reside in either sequential or partitioned data sets (PDSs). A sequential CLIST data set consists of only one CLIST, while a PDS can contain one or more CLISTs. In a PDS, each CLIST is a member and has a unique member name. When a PDS consists entirely of CLISTs, it is called a CLIST library.

CLIST libraries make CLISTs easy to maintain and execute. Your installation can keep commonly used CLISTs in a system CLIST library, and you can keep your own CLISTs in a private CLIST library. If you allocate a CLIST library to the file SYSPROC, or specify the library on the ALTLIB command, you can execute the CLISTs implicitly by typing their member names.

Implicit execution frees you from having to code the name of the CLIST library on an EXEC command. Besides saving keystrokes, implicit execution lets you keep different versions of a CLIST in different libraries and control which version executes at a given time. For more information, see Allocating CLIST libraries for implicit execution.

CLISTs invoked implicitly, and command processors invoked from CLISTs, should not have names equal to reserved CLIST words. If name conflicts cannot be avoided, consider using the &STR built-in function to solve the problem. See Defining character data - &STR. For example, in the case of the SELECT subcommand of the RACFRW command, you can specify the subcommand name as follows, to avoid confusion with the CLIST SELECT statement:

&STR(SELECT) VIOLATIONS