Left-justifying and right-justifying data

Suppose you had input records that looked like this:

          History
  Psychology
                     Business
     Biology
         Computer Science

Since this is rather messy looking, you can use the following statements to left-justify the data to make it more presentable:

  OPTION COPY
  OUTREC FIELDS=(1,30,JFY=(SHIFT=LEFT))

SHIFT=LEFT indicates that you want to left-justify. The results produced for this OUTREC statement are:

History
Psychology
Business
Biology
Computer Science

Alternatively, you can use the following statements to right-justify the data:

  OPTION COPY
  OUTREC FIELDS=(1,30,JFY=(SHIFT=RIGHT))

SHIFT=RIGHT indicates that you want to right-justify. The results produced for this OUTREC statement are:

                       History
                    Psychology
                      Business
                       Biology
              Computer Science

DFSORT's justify feature also lets you add a leading string, a trailing string, or both, to the data. For example, you can use the following statements to surround the left-justified data with '<' and '>':

  OPTION COPY
  OUTREC FIELDS=(1,30,JFY=(SHIFT=LEFT,LEAD=C'<',TRAIL=C'>'))

The results produced for this OUTREC statement are:

<History>
<Psychology>
<Business>
<Biology>
<Computer Science>

LEAD=string specifies the leading string as a character or hexadecimal constant (1 to 50 bytes). TRAIL=string specifies the trailing string as a character or hexadecimal constant (1 to 50 bytes).

Notice that when you left-justify, the trailing string is placed directly to the right of the last non-blank character in your data.

If you want to right-justify instead of left-justify, you can use the following statements:

  OPTION COPY
  OUTREC FIELDS=(1,30,JFY=(SHIFT=RIGHT,LEAD=C'<',TRAIL=C'>'))

The results produced for this OUTREC statement are:

                     <History>
                  <Psychology>
                    <Business>
                     <Biology>
            <Computer Science>

Notice that when you right-justify, the leading string is placed directly to the left of the first non-blank character in your data.

If your leading or trailing string causes the output field to be longer than the input field, you will lose characters. In order to avoid that, you can increase the length of the output field with the LENGTH parameter. For example, suppose you had input records that looked like this:

   rats
 bats
  cats

and you added a leading string with these control statements:

  OPTION COPY
  OUTREC FIELDS=(1,7,JFY=(SHIFT=LEFT,LEAD=C'*I love ',TRAIL=C'*'))

Since your input field is 7 bytes, your output field is also 7 bytes by default, so your output fields are truncated to:

*I love
*I love
*I love

To avoid truncation, you can use LENGTH=16 to increase the output field length by the 9 characters you added for the leading and trailing strings:

  OPTION COPY
  OUTREC FIELDS=(1,7,JFY=(SHIFT=LEFT,LEAD=C'*I love ',TRAIL=C'*',
    LENGTH=16))

The larger output field can accommodate your leading and trailing strings so you can show your appreciation for these wonderful creatures with the following output:

*I love rats*
*I love bats*
*I love cats*

The justify feature can also be used to remove leading and trailing characters other than blanks from your data. Suppose you had input records that looked like this:

         (History)
 (Psychology)
                    (Business)
    (Biology)
        (Computer Science)

You can use the following statements to remove the leading '(' character and the trailing ')' character before you left-justify the data:

  OPTION COPY
  OUTREC FIELDS=(1,30,JFY=(SHIFT=LEFT,PREBLANK=C'()'))

PREBLANK=list specifies a list of characters you want to replace with blanks before DFSORT starts to justify the data. You can specify the list as a character or hexadecimal constant (1 to 10 bytes). Remember that each character in the list is independent of the other characters. For example, PREBLANK=C'*/' replaces each leading or trailing '*' character and '/' character with a blank before justify procssing begins (for example, leading and trailing character sequences of /*, //*, */, // and * are all replaced with blanks).

The results produced for this OUTREC statement are:

History
Psychology
Business
Biology
Computer Science

You could use the following statements to right-justify the data and replace the leading '(' character and trailing ')' character with a leading '<' character and a trailing '>' character:

  OPTION COPY
  OUTREC FIELDS=(1,30,JFY=(SHIFT=RIGHT,PREBLANK=C'()',
     LEAD=C'<',TRAIL=C'>'))

The results produced for this OUTREC statement are:

                     <History>
                  <Psychology>
                    <Business>
                     <Biology>
            <Computer Science>

For complete details on justify, see z/OS DFSORT Application Programming Guide.