Most of mainframe programmers know how and why to use ‘)’ or ‘))’ ‘((‘ as line command in dataset. But when you need to shift only specific columns in a dataset, say column 20-30, the trick is to use the BNDS command. Lets see how it works in this post.
For this post, we have taken a file with length of 20 characters. If we give the BNDS command as a line command in the first line, it will show the current boundary of the file, shown in Angular braces <> in the file.
Will try to move the data present between 5-15 columns. So we give the command BNDS 5 15 in command line. Next when we use the shift operator (for line 1-5), the data present in column from 5th position will be moved only.
We can also use * to keep one end open. So the command BNDS * XX doesn’t change left margin, but set right margin to XX.
NB: BNDS need to be turned off after using, else it will be confusing and can mess the data. The RESET command doesn’t have any impact on the settings of the margins.
Leave a comment