Defining and using symbols

A symbol is a name (preferably something meaningful) you can use to represent a field or a constant. Sets of symbols, also called mappings, can be used to describe a group of related fields and constants such as the information in a particular type of record. Such mappings allow you to refer to fields, constants, and output columns by their symbols, freeing you from having to know the position, length and format of fields, the values of constants or the position of the output column you want to use.

DFSORT's symbol processing feature allows you or your site to create symbols for the fields in your own records and for constants associated with those fields. You can then use those symbols in DFSORT control statements and ICETOOL operators.

In addition, you can obtain predefined sets of symbols to use for the records created by other products such as RACF®, DCOLLECT and DFSMSrmm. Visit the DFSORT Home Page for information about obtaining DFSORT symbol mappings for records produced by other products, and examples that use these symbols.

The chapter in this section explains how to define symbols for the bookstore data set and use them in several DFSORT control statements and ICETOOL operators.

Although not described in this book, you can also use:

System symbols (for example, &SYSPLEX. and &JOBNAME.) in your symbol constants. For a full description of how symbols (including system symbols) can be used with DFSORT and ICETOOL, see z/OS DFSORT Application Programming Guide.
SET and PROC symbols included in the DFSORT and ICETOOL EXEC PARM string. For a full description of how SET and PROC symbols can be used with DFSORT and ICETOOL, see z/OS DFSORT Application Programming Guide.