TPX Batch UPDATE includes text that is unintentionally interpreted as a masking character.

Products

• Teleview
• TELEVIEW- PACKAGE
• TPX - Session Management
• Vman Session Management for z/OS

Issue/Introduction

Description

Text to be updated via the batch facility contains a dash or hyphen. The "-" is being interpreted as a mask character.

Solution

You can change the masking character from the default "-" to some other character that you are not using in your text.

From the Batch Administration Guide, Chapter 3:

Changing the Masking Character ? The value of the masking character is stored in a variable named MASKCHAR. You can use a SET statement to change the value of MASKCHAR so that your masking character does not conflict with actual values in the records. For example, if you want to make the masking character an exclamation point (!), use the following SET statement:

SET MASKCHAR '!'

For example:
Trying to update the ACTLABEL definitions using the following statements:

UPDATE ACTAPPL (ACTTPX2 TSOD0
(ACTLABEL ('Time Sharing DEV0 - NODE4')))
UPDATE ACTAPPL (ACTTPX2 TSOD1
(ACTLABEL ('Time Sharing DEV1 - NODE4')))
 
Produces the following:
 
TPBL1000 02/03/09.034 10:02:54.05 UPDATE ACTAPPL (ACTTPX2 TSOD0
TPBL1000 02/03/09.034 10:02:54.06 (ACTLABEL ('Time Sharing DEV0 - NODE4')))
TPBL1050 02/03/09.034 10:02:54.06 Mask character - found where not allowed,
suppressing action
TPBL1033 02/03/09.034 10:02:54.07 AACTTPX2 UPDATed
TPBL1000 02/03/09.034 10:02:54.07 UPDATE ACTAPPL (ACTTPX2 TSOD1
TPBL1000 02/03/09.034 10:02:54.08 (ACTLABEL ('Time Sharing DEV1 - NODE4')))
TPBL1050 02/03/09.034 10:02:54.08 Mask character - found where not allowed,
suppressing action
TPBL1037 02/03/09.034 10:02:54.08 No fields updated for AACTTPX2 TSOD1
TPBL1033 02/03/09.034 10:02:54.08 AACTTPX2 Prcssed
TPBL1009 02/03/09.034 10:02:54.08 4 records read from SYSIN
 
 
The errors can be avoided by starting with the SET statement:
 
SET MASKCHAR '!' 
UPDATE ACTAPPL (ACTTPX2 TSOD0
(ACTLABEL ('Time Sharing DEV0 - NODE4')))
UPDATE ACTAPPL (ACTTPX2 TSOD1
(ACTLABEL ('Time Sharing DEV1 - NODE4')))

Environment

Release:
Component: TLVIEW