Hello,

I've only seen a few STREAM files.  They've always had a ! at the start
of them except for when they are re-directing input into something like
SORT.

But now I've got a bit of a STREAM file from a customer which uses : at
the start.  What is the significance of this?  Well I looked in the
STREAM manual -

     Begin each job in the input file with the !JOB command and
     terminate it with the !EOJ command.  Begin all commands with
     an appropriate substitute (other than colon) character, as
     in !JOB.  When the input file is spooled to a disk, MPE/iX
     replaces the substitute command identifier with a colon, so
     that the data files are properly interpreted when executed.

In other words, you can use any character BUT the ':'.  The customer has
even used : with the JOB command but then , after the first few lines,
they've decided to use '!'.  Then later on they might revert back to :
for no apparent reason.

Is there a good reason for this or are they being careless?

Thanks.

Peter
--
http://www.beluga.freeserve.co.uk

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