Statistics for VB data set record lengths

When working with variable length record data sets, you can use the STATS operator to easily obtain the following information:

The shortest record in the data set (minimum)
The longest record in the data set (maximum)
The average length of records in the data set (average)
The total number of bytes in the data set (total)

ICETOOL provides the special ON(VLEN) field for printing these statistics. Specify ON(VLEN) as you would any other ON field.

When you code ON(p,m,f) fields for VB records, remember to add 4 to the starting position to account for the 4-byte RDW, in the same way discussed earlier for DFSORT control statement fields.

The following STATS operator reports the minimum, maximum, total and average values for the record length and for a PD field in the first two data bytes:

STATS FROM(VBIN) ON(VLEN) ON(5,2,PD)

So far
Now you know how to use ICETOOL's STATS operator to print statistics for numeric fields and VB record lengths. In the next section, you will learn how to use ICETOOL's SORT operator.