Suggestion for a new System Request option

["York, Albert" <albert.york@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The System/36 used to have an option on the system request menu which was
called something like 'Set latch flag'. All it did was turn on an indicator
that you could test in your program. Then your program could take the
appropriate action. I used it for ending long searches for example. I would
really like to see something like that on the AS/400. Right now the only
choice we have is to end the whole program, which is pretty heavy handed.

Here is what I suggest.

1.      In your program, create a data area in QTEMP with a name like
QSYSRQSOPT. It would be 51 bytes long. The first 50 bytes would contain a
description (i.e. 'End Search').
2.      When the user presses System Request the description is displayed as
an option.
3.      If the option is taken then the last byte of the data area is set to
'1'.
4.      Your program could check the data area periodically. If the flag is
set then it is time to cancel what it is doing.

It seems like this wouldn't be too difficult to implement.

Albert York