Accessing Auxiliary Storage: FILE › Work with DL/I Databases › FILE Functions for DL/I Databases › SSA Formats

SSA Formats

SSA specifications follow standard DL/I conventions. Information entered in the SSA field must conform to the following format:

segname qual keyname ro keyarg

segname

Indicates the segment name, from one to eight characters long. If the segment name is less than eight characters, it must be followed by a blank.

qual

Indicates a blank, left parenthesis, (, or asterisk, *.

• Blanks specify an unqualified SSA.
• A left parenthesis, (, specifies a qualified SSA. If used, right
  parenthesis, ), must follow the keyarg data.
• An asterisk, *, specifies that command codes are present. In this case, either a blank (for an unqualified SSA) or a left parenthesis (for a qualified SSA) must follow the last command code. FILE does not validate command codes. This is handled by DL/I.

keyname

Indicates the key name, from one to eight characters long. If it is less than eight characters long, it must be followed by one blank.

ro

Indicates a relational operator. It can be any of the standard relational operators used in DL/I. It must be two bytes long and must immediately follow either the last character in the keyname (if the keyname is eight characters long), or the blank terminating the keyname (if the keyname is less than eight characters long).

If you use a one‑character sign rather than two letters to specify the relational operator (such as = instead of EQ), you must specify a blank before or after the sign.

keyarg

Indicates the argument for the key name. Enter the keyarg as either character or hexadecimal data, or as a combination of both, in one of the following ways:

• C'data' for character data
• X'data' for hexadecimal data
• data for treated as character data

  Note: If your keyarg data contains any of these special characters,
  ), &, |, *, or + you must use the X'data' format to enter it.

• Create compound conditions by using & or | signs to join multiple keyname ro keyarg specifications.

  Note: If you specify more than one SSA, you must insert a blank and SSA= before each subsequent SSA.