Advanced Topics › Global Data Set Integrity Facility › The Exempt List › Wildcard Characters

Wildcard Characters

You can use the following wildcard characters to affect QNAME processing:

• Use the # character in the RNAME, job name, or QNAME. This character matches a single character in the name.

  For example, to match a LOCAL statement for the SYS1.LINKLIB data set with ENQ requests that use the QNAMEs DATAMNGR, DATAMNRR, or DATAMNSR, you could specify this statement in the GDIEXMPT member:

  LOCAL QNAME=DATAMN#R RNAME=SYS1.LINKLIB
  

• Use the * wildcard character with an RNAME or a job name. This character matches the remainder of the name.

  For example, to match a GLOBAL statement with ENQ and RESERVE requests issued by the jobs TEST1, TEST2, and TESTPAY, you could specify the following statement in the GDIEXMPT member:

  GLOBAL JOB=TEST*
  

  Note: If you specify TEST without the asterisk, you still get all jobs that begin with the letters TEST, since there is an implied asterisk after the job name. Therefore, if you do not want all jobs matching the name TEST with any suffix, then you should explicitly specify the job name on your statement. This is also true for RNAMEs. If you specify a "*" before the end of the RNAME, it is automatically replaced by a "#" (single character): "*" is invalid anywhere but at the end of the RNAME.

• Use the "?" character in an RNAME. This character matches the remainder of the current index level. However, the "?" character does not work if specified at the end of the RNAME.

  For example, suppose that you want to match a LOCAL statement with ENQ requests in which SYS1 is specified in the first index level of the RNAME and LOAD in the third index level of the RNAME. To do this, you could specify the following statement in the GDIEXMPT member:

  LOCAL RNAME=SYS1.?.LOAD
  

Notes:

• GDIF reorders the LOCAL and GLOBAL statements in the exempt list according to how many non-wildcard characters each name contains and in what position wildcard characters are specified. Therefore, you should specify as many leading, non-wildcard characters as possible in a job name, RNAME, or QNAME.
• For information on how GDIF reorders the exempt list, see How GDIF Reorder the Exempt List at Startup Time.