Starting ISPF

To start ISPF:

Log on to TSO.
When the READY prompt appears, type ISPF or PDF and press Enter.
If your installation has established an alias for ISPF, such as SPF, you can enter that instead.

The ISPF and PDF commands are aliases of ISPF module ISRPCP. When you run ISRPCP or one of its aliases with no parameters, ISPF is started through this command:

ISPSTART PANEL(default_primary_panel) NEWAPPL(ISR)

The default primary panel is usually ISR@PRIM, the ISPF Primary Option Menu (see Figure 1).

You can specify any of the ISPSTART parameters when invoking ISPF, PDF, or ISRPCP. However, if you do this you must ensure that you specify all the parameters that ISPSTART needs to run your application in the correct environment. This is because only those parameters you specify are passed to ISPSTART. For example, if you specify:

ISPF NEWAPPL(ABC)

ISPF is invoked with this command:

ISPSTART NEWAPPL(ABC)

Note that in this case ISPF does not pass PANEL(ISR@PRIM), part of its normal default string, to ISPSTART. Because the ISPSTART command generated does not contain a PANEL(…), PGM(…) or CMD(…) keyword, there is no primary panel to display.

For information about the syntax and options for ISPSTART, including the rules for specifying or overriding the default primary panel, refer to the z/OS V2R2 ISPF Dialog Developer's Guide and Reference.