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  Main Question - Posted From Guest:
I am running a dfsort on the mainframe with a variable length file, so the input positions are in different byte positions. I have to use the outrec parse (for exmaple OUTREC PARSE=(%01=(ENDBEFR=C',',FIXLEN=5)) to parse the positions in the sort but I keep getting this error: BLANK NEEDED IN COLUMN 1 OR OPERATION NOT DEFINED CORRECTLY How do I get around this as no matter how many times I have run it, this BLANK NEEDED IN COLUMN 1 OR OPERATION NOT DEFINED CORRECTLY error occurs. I'm not real familiar with dfsort and variable data files, so it may be something stupid.

Guest Says:
That pretty much means you have a comma missing somewhere or a syntax error or typo error somewhere in your sort parms. Double check your sort parms as I'm sure you have something missed there.

Frank Yaeger Says: That error means you did not start the DFSORT statement in position 2 or later, or you do not have the DFSORT PTF installed that supports PARSE (it's been available since 2006 so that's probably unlikely).  Make sure your OUTREC statement looks like this (replace b with blank): bbOUTREC PARSE=(%01=(ENDBEFR=C',',FIXLEN=5)) Frank Yaeger - DFSORT Development Team (IBM) - yaeger@us.ibm.com Specialties: JOINKEYS, FINDREP, WHEN=GROUP, ICETOOL, Symbols, Migration                                                       DFSORT/MVS is on the Web at http://www.ibm.com/storage/dfsort

Guest Says: Thanks!

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