SCRATCH Statement

The SCRATCH statement is used to scratch a data set or member from a DASD volume. A data set or member is scratched only from the volumes designated in the SCRATCH statement. This function does not delete catalog entries for scratched data sets.

A SCRATCH operation will not be processed if the data set or volume is being used by a program executing concurrently. "DISP=OLD" on the DD statement only prevents the inadvertent deletion of a data set. It does not ensure exclusive use of the data set during execution of the job step. When scratching a member of a partitioned data set, it is your responsibility to ensure that the data set is not currently in use.

For multivolume data sets, all volumes specified must be online.

When scratching a data set managed by the Storage Management Subsystem (SMS), care must be taken to ensure that the device type and volumes list on the VOL parameter reflects the volume actually allocated to the data set. When you specify a volume when creating an SMS-managed data set, SMS will not automatically allocate the data set on that volume.

When scratching an SMS-managed data set, IEHPROGM will uncatalog that data set.

The syntax of the SCRATCH statement is shown below.

Label	Statement	Parameters
[label]	SCRATCH	{VTOC\|DSNAME=name} ,VOL=device=(list) [,PURGE] [,MEMBER=name] [,SYS]

where:

VTOC

specifies that all data sets on the designated volume be scratched, except for

a data set that is protected by a password
a data set whose expiration date has not passed
a data set that contains the index for an indexed VTOC

Password-protected data sets are scratched if the correct password is provided.

The effect of VTOC is modified when it is used with PURGE or SYS.

DSNAME=name

specifies the fully qualified name of the data set to be scratched or the partitioned data set that contains the member to be scratched. The name must not exceed 44 characters, including delimiters.

VOL=device=(list)

specifies the device type and serial numbers of the volumes, limited to 50, that contain the data sets. If only one serial number is listed, it need not be enclosed in parentheses. Multiple serial numbers should be separated with commas.

If VTOC or MEMBER is specified, VOL cannot specify more than one volume. Caution should be used when specifying VTOC if VOL specifies the system residence volume.

PURGE/NOPURGE

specifies whether data sets designated by DSNAME or VTOC are scratched.

The presence of the PURGE or NOPURGE keyword may be ignored for SMS managed data sets. When OVRD_EXPDT is specified in the IGDSMSxx member of SYS1.PARMLIB, the PURGE and NOPURGE keywords are not honored. The data set is always deleted, whether or not it has expired. This is true only if the data set is a DASD data set and SMS managed. The use of the PURGE and NOPURGE keywords is unchanged for non-SMS managed data sets.

MEMBER=name

specifies a member name or alias of a member (in the named data set) to be removed from the directory of a partitioned data set. This name is not validity-checked because all members must be accessible, whether the name is valid or not.

Default: The entire data set or volume of data sets specified by name is scratched.

SYS

limits the action of SCRATCH VTOC so that only temporary data sets are erased. This means data sets whose names were coded beginning with an ampersand on JCL. An example is

DSN=&LIB

Temporary data sets have names beginning with "AAAAAAAA.AAAAAAAA.AAAAAAAA.AAAAAAAA." or "SYSnnnnn.T" with "F", "V", or "A" in position 19. These are names assigned to the data sets by the operating system.

If the name of the data set is in this form, it is likely to be a temporary data set which was not erased at normal step or job termination; nnnnn is the date the data set was created in yyddd format.

The SYS parameter is valid only when VTOC is specified.