Select specific members to be processed from one or more data sets by coding a SELECT statement to name the members. Alternatively, all members but a specific few can be designated by coding an EXCLUDE statement to name members not to be processed.

You cannot use both a SELECT and an EXCLUDE statement in the same copy operation (same set of input ddnames).

A maximum of eight characters can be given for the member or alias name on a copy operation.

Selected members are searched for in a low-to-high (a-to-z) collating sequence, regardless of the order in which they are specified on the SELECT statement; however, they are copied in the same physical sequence in which they appear on the input partitioned data set or PDSE.

Once a member designated in a SELECT statement is found in an input data set, no search is made for it on any subsequent input data set. When all of the selected members are found, the operation ends, even if all data sets have not yet been processed.

When you copy, you can rename members unless the input and output data sets are the same.

When using COPYGROUP, you can use SELECT MEMBER name filter pattern masking instead of specifying a full member name. The filter characters asterisk (*) and percent sign (%) provide the member name filtering capability. With SELECT MEMBER name filter pattern masking, all of the members of the input data set that match the filter mask pattern criteria will be selected.

When using COPYGROUP, if you specify SELECT MEMBER name filter pattern masking, you can also specify EXCLUDE MEMBER name pattern masking. Otherwise, EXCLUDE is not supported with COPYGROUP.