Again, I am looking for a programmable way to "read" an existing spoolfile in an outq and generate a .pdf in the IFS. I thought I would use the SQL function instead of CPYSPLF because I thought it would eliminate the temp file.

By the "already tools to do this" comment, I was referring to packages that other companies have written and are selling. As for your comment about not using CPYSPLF because someone wrote it, should I also continue to do DSPFFD to an outfile and read that instead of using SYSCOLUMNS? Sometimes there are easier, more efficient ways to do things than the way there were done 20 years ago and that was what I thought this SQL function would be.

I am going to look into Mark's response to use CPYSPLF *TOSTMF to see if it does what I need it to do.


-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Rob Berendt
Sent: Friday, January 2, 2026 5:49 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: SPOOLED_FILE_DATA table function

If you have 5770-TS1 loaded (a freebie) you get this PDF generation for free. Ignoring it because it's a tool someone else wrote would be like ignoring CPYSPLF because someone else wrote that.

On Thu, Jan 1, 2026 at 4:31 PM <smith5646midrange@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Unfortunately, everyone jumped on the "underline" and not the "bold".
:( The case I am dealing with is they are using it for bold print. If
they want to highlight a value, they reprint the line (no advance)
with only that value included and that specific value is bolded.

The exercise was to take a normal spoolfile sitting in an OUTQ and
reproduce it as a .pdf in an IFS folder for later download. Yes,
there are already tools to do this but you don't learn anything by
using a tool that someone else wrote. I was just trying to use the
SQL "not so new" tools that are being created for us by IBM. It seems
this particular function is lacking some of the capabilities of CPYSPLF like FCFC information.

However, now that I have retrieved the code and see it is doing the
same CPYSPLF under the covers, I have to wonder...why bother other
than to learn how to create my own function.

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