Re: Get CHKLNK, CHKPFM, FNDSTR, etc programming utilities -- MIDRANGE-L

I would recommend contacting David Morris and see if you can add your 
utilities to his open source iSeries Toolkit.

http://www.iseries-toolkit.org/

There are a lot of other individual open source projects out there.  I 
think it would be better to contribute to an existing one than it would be 
to start another.

Mark







craigs@xxxxxxxxx
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10/06/2003 02:15 PM
Please respond to Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
 
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        Subject:        Get CHKLNK, CHKPFM, FNDSTR, etc programming 
utilities






I (and others here) have developed utilities to help us in programming and
maintenance.  Most of these (at least I) bypassed IBM because they would
have to go through all these committees, decisions, and programming time.
We need them now!  We have done a majority of the programming on 
utilities,
so it seems like IBM would just have to make a decision.  I developed a
command called CHKLNK during V5R1 to check for the existence of IFS 
objects
(generic).  Allows "*" (up to) and "?" (any wildcards) even allowing "*" 
at
beginning.  For example, CHKLNK OBJ('/dir/*EFG?I*Q*').  I wrote my own
procedure for scanning a generic pattern and just copied it to programs
that should use it.  I thought, okay, if IBM hasn't even mentioned any
utilities like this and it is already V5R2, forget it.  More and more
programmers are asking for a way to check the existence of an IFS object
and I direct them to the CHKLNK command.  It returns a generic CPF9898 but
it does the job well.  There are many others that we worked around.  Does
IBM just not care about enhancing utilities?  Does anyone care?
If I could get my hands on the CHKOBJ command, I could allow all those
objects to be input generic like it should have been in the first place.
I'm doing it now with the CHKLNK command.  I developed a utility to find
strings in source and someone else developed a utility to find the 
location
of source given a member.  There are utilities to FTP automatically given 
a
script with error-checking and without passwords being open to prying 
eyes.
With a little more time we could even develop an alternative to almost
every SNADS command.  I asked IBM if it was possible to send a message 
from
one system to another without using SNADS.  They said no.  I thought a
little more and proved them wrong.  Just use FTP with the "quote rcmd"
using sndmsg as a remote command.  There are others that we just developed
instead of pushing IBM.

Now, I am looking at creating something like a CHKPFM for the sole purpose
of allowing generic member names to be checked easily.  I am thinking of
using this to check the status of batch jobs.  Each job would do an ADDPFM
using a 4 char id and a 6 char job number.  Right before the job finishes,
do a RMVM.  That way no job would be in contention for the physical file.
Then the calling job could loop and run a command to check for any members
starting with that 4 char id to know if a job is in MSGW or not.  Not
really good though if a job is cancelled.

Anyway, does anyone know of some PTF's or some websites with some good and
free utilities for iSeries?  Is there an open source for iSeries?  Any way
we could get our hands on the source and make our own version?  Should I
try to push IBM on some of these utilities or share utilties on some
website somewhere?

Thanks,
Craig Strong

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