Creating a message source file

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The Message Facility provides commands and subroutines to retrieve and display program messages located in externalized message catalogs. A programmer creates a message source file containing application messages and converts it to a message catalog with the gencat command.

To create a message-text source file, open a file using any text editor. Enter a message identification number or symbolic identifier. Then enter the message text as shown in the following example:

1 message-text   $       (This message is numbered)
2 message-text   $       (This message is numbered)
OUTMSG message-text  $   (This message has a symbolic identifier \
                          called OUTMSG)
4 message-text   $       (This message is numbered)