Browsing a data set

If you select Browse Mode on the View Entry Panel, ISPF displays either a member selection list or a Browse data display. For information about displaying a member list, see the topic about Using Member Selection Lists in the ISPF Libraries and Data Sets topic of the z/OS ISPF User's Guide Vol I.

Note: If you specify a volume serial on the View Entry Panel, you can browse a single volume of a non-SMS multivolume data set.

A Browse data display is shown in Figure 1.

This screen dump shows the start of a COBOL program. — Figure 1. Browse - data display (ISRBROBA)

Each character in the data that cannot be displayed is changed on the display to either a period or a character that you have specified. Using the DISPLAY command, you can specify whether printer carriage-control characters are to be treated as part of the data, and thus displayed.

You can browse data that is stored in a Unicode format. MVS™ Conversion Services must first be set up for the appropriate conversions. See z/OS ISPF Planning and Customizing.

During Browse, four-way scrolling is available through the scroll commands. You can also use the FIND and LOCATE commands to scroll to a particular character string, line number, or symbolic label.

Whenever you enter a command, such as FIND or one of the scroll commands, that puts the cursor under a character string in the data set, ISPF highlights that character string. This highlighting occurs whether you type the command on the command line and press Enter or press a function key that the command is assigned to.