Sending and receiving short messages in line mode TSO/E

To send a simple one line message to someone on your system node, you can use the line mode SEND command. Type the message within single quotation marks and the user ID at the end preceded by the keyword USER. Thus to send a message to a user with the user ID of MIKE, you can enter after the READY message:

SEND 'Meeting today at 1:00.'  USER(mike)

Whatever is within the single quotation marks is sent. If MIKE is logged on when you send the message, he sees it immediately on his screen. If MIKE is not logged on, the system notifies you and deletes the message.

To ensure that MIKE receives your message whether he is logged on, add the LOGON operand at the end.

SEND 'Meeting today at 1:00.'  USER(mike) LOGON

If MIKE is logged on, he sees the message on his screen. If he is not logged on, the message appears the next time he logs on.

To send the same message to MIKE, SUSAN, and BILL, separate the user IDs by commas within the parentheses.

SEND 'Meeting today at 1:00.' USER(MIKE,SUSAN,BILL)

Two syntax rules you might need are:

The message text cannot exceed 115 characters including blanks.
When you want to display a single quotation mark within a message, type it as two consecutive single quotation marks. For example, type don't to display don't.

Your installation may use various security features that affect the way the SEND command works. If so, the results of sending a message may differ from those described here. z/OS TSO/E User's Guide explains the differences you can expect.

Exercise
Send the following message to yourself by substituting * for a user ID. `SEND 'This is how it looks.' USER(*)` Now send a message of your choice to another user on your same system node. If you are notified that the user is not logged on, resend the message with the LOGON operand.