CLIST

CLIST ( Command List ) is a scripting language for TSO on IBM mainframes.

It is often a procedure that is coded in CLIST ( " CLIST procedure" ), abbreviated as CLIST.

A CLIST procedure is loaded at execution time in the main memory and interpreted there. In its simplest form it consists of rows of TSO commands, similar to a MS -DOS batch file (*. Bat).

In addition to pure TSO commands variables, query options and conditional jumps exist. The syntax is inflexible, access to the contents of the source variables and built-in functions start with the substitution character ' &' and must be coded in uppercase.

For a comfortable calling CLIST procedures should be stored in a present in the SYSPROC concatenation partitioned data set, otherwise they must be qualified by the TSO command 'EXEC ' with the full file name.

CLIST is now considered obsolete and is in practice as a scripting language under TSO replaced mainly by REXX. CLIST skills are only required when old CLIST procedures must be supervised, such as under MVT on Hercules system where no REXX is available.

An example program: