🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sun, 4 Sep 2005 11:42:36 -0700 Paul Robinson said:
>I am attempting to unpack on a PC, an EBCDIC Partitioned Data Set (PDS)
>container file and extract the members (it's one of many I have
>downloaded from the tape library, that one that has over 500 mainframe
>tape files on it, whose name escapes me).  This means I want to be able
>to do extractions programmatically by reading the directory and any
>associated metadata contained in the PDS file for that purpose.
>
>I need to find out the format of an IBM Mainframe PDS file and have
>been unable to find any references for it.  I believe it is similar in
>concept to the old LBR archive file format (as opposed to say, ARC or
>ZIP archives because LBR did not compress files and ARC and ZIP do).
>
>Short version of a long story: I do not have access to a mainframe and
>Hercules won't work on my Windows XP, but I have MUSIC/SP (sans
>utilites to read PDS datasets), which means I can't use tools like
>IEBGENER or whatever is normally used on mainframes for that purpose,
>so I wrote some quickie Turbo Pascal programs under MSDOS to, among
>many tools related to this purpose, to read an EBCDIC coded file and
>translate the EBCDIC data into ASCII so I can either extract the
>members of the PDS untranslated as pure EBCDIC or extract and translate
>(for doc files and source code).
>
>I have looked at the PDS files directly and can see that they consist
>of some kind of metadata such as prefix information, some kind of
>directory, then individual files, but with some extra coding stuck at
>points in the middle of the individual members which causes problems
>because they are then contaminated and I don't necessarily know where
>or how this extra code is inserted.  It also causes problems for
>extracting, say, object files where I might not necessarily know what
>is actual ESD/RLD/TXT object record data and what is some of the file
>structure or metadata of the PDS container to which it is a member.
>
>I would like to find either the format of a PDS or a reference to one
>of IBM's on-line manuals that I can download that would have it.
>
>Once I extract the individual members I can either upload them in
>binary as pure EBCDIC or I can translate them into source code as
>appropriate.
>
>I think I am at least a fair quality programmer, but I want to learn
>more and I need to read other people's code to do that.
>
>I figure once I get more experience I'll be good at it.  I've been a
>notary public for 24 months and a computer programmer for 24 years.
>
>Thank you for any assistance you may be able to offer.  You may send
>replies to the list or to me directly if you prefer.

You should be able to find the info here:

http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/zos/bkserv/

or save yourself some work and get Xmit Manager here:

http://www.cbttape.org/ftp/xmitmgr/XmitManager-v3.zip


>
>Paul Robinson
>"A computer programmer and Notary Public
>in and for the Commonwealth of Virginia, at large."