My old REXX calendar program

Got it working on Hercules VM/370. Wouldn’t work as written using EXECIO statement’s to read/write to disk. So I changed it to use LINEIN/LINEOUT statement’s. I don’t believe these were valid statement’s when I wrote this 29 years ago on 3/31/94. It makes a calendar of the current month…by default. And flags the current day with an asterisk. You can also add MM YYYY for other months.

VM/370 CE EXECIO error

Well it certainly helps to place a working example next to your own code in error. I spotted a slight problem.

"EXCIO * DISKR IN_FILE (FINIS STEM stemvar." Mine
"EXECIO 3 DISKR MYFILE (FINIS"               Correct

Starring me in the face the whole time. Spelled it correct in the title…before I wrote this!

However it still complains about the FINIS.

Also I learned I could do…HELP EXECIO

Ready; T=0.02/0.03 19:53:37
q cmslevel
VM/370 CMS Community Edition Version 1 Release 1.2
Ready; T=0.01/0.01 19:53:42
q cplevel
SYSTEM 4381-A
VM/370 Community Edition Version  1 Release  1.2 07/19/22 13:20:46
IPL at 19:22:34 GMT MONDAY 08/21/23
PEAK LOAD= 005 USERS
Ready; T=0.01/0.01 19:53:59

TK5…ready?

In further reading of the Discord…there is some concern if TK5 is ready. It worked fine for me in my very limited testing. As I’ve said before retro computing is just something I occasionally do for nostalgia purposes…to relive a little of my past. I’ve already lived this life on a daily basis. And, I was paid to do it. So there was that reward. But also the reward for helping the business I was working for, be successful. Especially when that business is a small growing company. The satisfaction of that, and the appreciation of those I worked for was probably more important than the money I earned. Of course I wouldn’t be saying that if couldn’t pay my bills and save a little also.

Also, however I did see a file titled TK4-_Retirement.txt that began “with the advent of TK5 many of the old TK4- materials are becoming obsolete.” and ended “Jürgen”.

GCSORT

I heard about GCSORT on Moshix’s YouTube Channel titled “Sorting with GnuCOBOL Sort”. What I don’t exactly understand is it’s association with GnuCOBOL. It’s even described in GnuCOBOL’s FAQ as “A powerful external sort utility, for use with sequential (fixed length record) files.”

Perhaps it’s because…

  • oftentimes in mainframe batch jobs, the sort is a separate step.
  • of the “fixed length record”

GnuCOBOL already has a SORT built into it. I’ve used it a few times.

VM/370 and EXECIO

I tried to copy one of my old REXX programs to VM/370 but it didn’t like some statements. EXECIO for example and I use that a lot. I assumed it wasn’t supported. However someone implemented it for VM/370. But it still failed for me. So I need to look into it. If I could find 1 simple program that uses the DISKR option it would probably help a lot. I was trying things yesterday and it was complaining about the FINIS option. Then I could almost swear I changed nothing and instead I was getting +++ RC(-3) +++, which means “No CMS command issued from EXEC was found with this name, or an invalid function occurred when issuing the SET or QUERY command from EXEC with IMPCP active.”

gnuPrime…5,000,000

Just for the heck of it I modified (2 small changes) my gnuCOBOL prime number program to allow up to 5 million primes

4999823 4999849 4999867 4999871 4999879 4999889 4999913 4999933 4999949 4999957 4999961 4999963 4999999                                                        
 
  348513 primes up to  5000000 found.

real	0m4.968s
user	0m0.644s
sys	0m0.020s

348513 primes up to 5000000 found.

real [wall time including time to type 5000000 in and hit Enter]
user [execution time which includes the time it took to write 348,513 prime #s to screen]
sys

A little more than half a second.