Endevor delta level shows all lines as changed after editing element with Quickedit

Products

• Endevor

Issue/Introduction

Sometimes, after editing an element with Quickedit, the history of changes shows that the delta level created by the edit has changed all the lines in the element.

What causes this effect?

Cause

By default, Endevor delta level creation compares each and every column within the compare range (fields COMPARE FROM and COMPARE TO in the type definition panel.

Trailing spaces, if present, are also compared. Therefore, if a line has been added or removed trailing spaces, it will be flagged as changed by the delta level being created, even though the text of the line has not changed

There are several factors that may influence in this effect:

1 - RECFM of the base library

This may only happen if the base library that holds the element has RECFM V. It may not happen when the RECFM is F as, in this case, all the records have the same length and trailing spaces may not be an issue.

2 - ELEMENT RECFM field in the type definition panel

This field is used for Quickedit processing. It sets the RECFM of the work dataset where the element is copied, edited and returned to Endevor at the end of the session. The possible values are:

• F to allocate the dataset with RECFM F
• V to allocate the dataset with RECFM V
• N to allocate the dataset with RECFM F or V depending on whether all the element lines have the same length

For example, if 'element recfm' is set to F and the element records have variable lengths, most or all of the lines will be added trailing spaces when the element is edited with Quickedit

3 - Commands used during the edit session

When editing a file with RECFM V, some commands in the ISPF editor may add or remove trailing spaces to the lines. For example:

• NULLS OFF would add trailing spaces
• PRESERVE OFF would remove trailing spaces

Resolution

Fix LU13852 for release 19.0, or LU13949 for release 18.1, introduce support for new option DELTA_IGNORE_TRAILING_SPACES in the ENCOPTBL table, which is described as:

***********************************************************************
* IGNORE LINES WHERE THE ONLY CHANGE WAS IN THE NUMBER OF TRAILING     
* SPACES WHEN DETERMINING WHICH LINES CHANGED WHILE ADDING A NEW       
* SOURCE LEVEL (CREATING AN ELEMENT DELTA).                            
*                                                                      
* APPLIES ONLY TO ELEMENTS BELONGING TO TYPES WITH DATA FORMAT = TEXT  
*---------------------------------------------------------------------*
*        ENHOPT DELTA_IGNORE_TRAILING_SPACES=ON    DEFAULT VALUE IS OFF
*                                                                      
***********************************************************************

When this option is enabled, the line compare for delta creation only compares columns up to the last non-blank character so trailing spaces in both records are ignored and only records that have some non-blank character changed will be flagged as changed.