Comparing printer report output to datasets between Easytrieve 11.x and 6.4.

Products

• Easytrieve Report Generator

Issue/Introduction

The printer control characters used by Easytrieve Report Generator 11.x are different from those used by Easytrieve Plus Report Generator 6.4.

When printed the resulting reports look the same, but if they are stored in a dataset the different printer control characters used can be seen.

This means that if for any reason a comparison of the reports is needed, for example when testing before upgrading to r11.x, then a straightforward dataset comparison fails as the number of lines written to the dataset is different.

Is it possible to compare the datasets from the two different versions discounting the printer control characters?

Resolution

The difference is because Easytrieve Plus r6.4 writes single blank lines until a page is filled whereas Easytrieve r11.x calculates the difference between the current print line and the page size and places an appropriate number of double and triple spacing ASA control characters in front. Therefore, the resulting output is the same, but the number of printed lines is reduced.

To compare just the printed details of the reports you can use the ISRSUPC utility, as documented in ISPF User's Guide Vol II.
The important thing is to use the CMPCOLM statement, which instructs the utility to compare from column 2 onwards (so ignoring the printer ASA control character in column 1) and the DPBLKCL option which tells it to not process any line with blanks in the compare area, as in the following example:

//SUPERC  EXEC PGM=ISRSUPC,   
//            PARM=(CHNGL,LINECMP,         
//            'DPBLKCL',   
//            '')   
//NEWDD   DD  DSN=easy64.printer.txt.file,   
//            DISP=SHR   
//OLDDD   DD  DSN=easy11.printer.txt.file,   
//            DISP=SHR   
//OUTDD   DD  SYSOUT=(A)   
//SYSIN DD *   
CMPCOLM 2:133   
/*