FREE (Free Disk Area) Macro

On a CKD device, that protected portion is a track; on an FBA device, it is a number of contiguous FBA blocks. On an FBA device, or on a DTFSD or DTFDI file that is assigned to a CKD disk, the FREE macro is treated as a null operation; all holding and freeing of FBA block ranges or CKD tracks for DTFSD and DTFDI are performed implicitly by LIOCS.

The same track (or blocks) can be held more than once without an intervening FREE if the hold requests are from the same task. The same number of FREEs must be issued before the track (or block) is completely freed. However, a task is terminated if more than 16 hold requests are recorded without an intervening FREE, or if a FREE is issued to a file that does not have a hold request for that track (or block). For situations that require the use of the FREE macro, refer to the Using z/VSE Macro Support.