Making Updates to Execs and Macros Using the EXECUPDT Command

If you wish to use the update facility to track changes to execs or macros written for REXX, you need to use the EXECUPDT command. The EXECUPDT command applies updates to an exec source file (using the UPDATE command) and removes the sequence numbers from the updated file to produce an executable version of the file. Using EXECUPDT is very similar to using the VMFASM EXEC to apply updates to an assembler language source and to assemble it.

Source files for the EXECUPDT command are fixed-length files with sequence numbers just like those for assembler language or COBOL. Note, the default record length for these files is 80 characters but files could have record lengths up to 255 characters. The file type of the exec source file has a ‘$’ prefixed to the normal file type. For example, SAMPLE $EXEC could be the source for an exec procedure and READY $XEDIT could be a source file for an XEDIT macro.

Updates to the exec source are created using XEDIT in the same manner as updates to programs in other languages. To apply the updates to the source, use the EXECUPDT command. For a single level update, enter:
execupdt sample exec
Note that the ‘$’ in the file type is not included in the file type specified on the EXECUPDT command. To do a multilevel update, you may use the CTL option of EXECUPDT. For example:
execupdt sample exec (ctl general