Commands

Commands can begin at, or to the right of, the left margin. For batch processing jobs, the default margins are 2 and 72.

Commands are separated from their parameters by one or more separators (blanks, commas, or comments). For some parameters, parentheses are used as separators. Comments are strings of characters surrounded by /* and */. Comments can contain any characters except */.

The defaulted character set does not contain lower case. See PARM Command for information on changing the character set used by IDCAMS. These parameters appear throughout this document, primarily in a table at the beginning of each command.

Many of the commands and keyword parameters can be abbreviated. Acceptable abbreviations appear after the description of each keyword parameter throughout Functional Command Syntax. Keyword parameters in plural form can also be coded in singular form. Not all abbreviations acceptable under access method services are acceptable in TSO. Abbreviation restrictions in TSO are described in From a Time Sharing Option Session.