JCL append date/time to a file?

Question

How do I add the current date/time to a file in JCL?

For example, from the JCL:

//INPUT DD *
CGQ-TEST.ISQCQ.NET
ASCII
LOCSITE SBD=SYSP.FTP.RCAMSI
SENDSITE
PUT    'TJ.UTJ0IR86.BC814.HDR'  BC814001.TMP
APPEND 'TJ.UTJ4IR86.BC(0)'      BC814001.TMP
APPEND 'TJ.UTJ0IR86.BC814.TRL'  BC814001.TMP
RENAME BC813001.TMP BC814001.TXT
CLOSE
QUIT

I need the file BC814001.TXT to actually be BC814001.20160930.110900.ent, where 20160930.110900 is current date and time (YYYYMMDD.HHMMSS format).

You can write a program to produce the INPUT lines for the JCL as a QSAM file output. — Gilbert Le Blanc, Sep 30 '16 at 18:31

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:34

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The best way to do this is to use the features of your job scheduling package (Control-M or one of its competitors). It's usually the most maintainable. Talk to your production control staff.

If for some reason that won't work for you, please see this answer.

edited May 23 '17 at 10:34

Community

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answered Sep 30 '16 at 22:02

cschneid

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score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 29 '19 at 21:57

The convention fd dataset level qualifiers limits you only to 8 characters per section (space between dots) and it should start with a character not a number.

Each name segment (qualifier) is 1 to 8 characters, the first of which must be alphabetic (A to Z) or national (# @ $). The remaining seven characters are either alphabetic, numeric (0 - 9), national, a hyphen (-). Name segments are separated by a period (.).

For z/OS environments I would go with 'day of the year' for the actual date. For example in your case - BC814001.D2016274.T110900.ent.

To get the current date and time You can refer to the TSO DATE and TSO TIME via REXX and format them the way You like (examples here http://www.rexxla.org/rexxlang/mfc/datec.html) then pass them as a variable to your SYSIN statement.

Regards, Jarek.

JCL append date/time to a file?

2 Answers2