RXPIPE - An introduction


What is command piping

 MSDOS, UNIX/LINUX and z/VM-CMS have a pipe command feature, with
 which you can string a number of commands together, with each command
 providing input for the next, with some reformatting in between.

 Short Linux sample, which does a long format list of files in the
 current directory, then feeds the list into the 'grep' command, which
 passes lines where the text 'hercules' is found:

  ls -l | grep "hercules"

 z/OS TSO has the same capability, but only if you purchase the Batch
 Pipes product, which includes the TSO PIPE command. The TSO PIPE
 command has been ported from CMS, it is extremely powerful, but the
 syntax can be rather intimidating.


Why RXPIPE

 RXPIPE is free and has a simpler command structure than the IBM
 PIPE, Admittedly it has not got all the bells and whistles that the
 IBM product has, but some of the shortcomings can be addressed by
 running REXX statements directly in a pipe.


Some RXPIPE samples

 This sample is similar to the Linux sample above, it lists a users
 datasets (&user is an internal variable containing the userid),
 extracts all lines with '.TEST.' and displays those lines.

  rxpipe catsearch &user a | include .TEST.

 This sample shows a sorted list of your RACF TSO profile.

  rxpipe tso lu &user tso noracf | exclude -- | include notnull


RXPIPE and I/O

 Doing I/O with RXPIPE is usually a simple matter, you just specify
 the datasetname, no need to allocate and free. Dataset names must be
 fully qualified, may not be quoted, but need not be in uppercase.

 Sample read of a pds member.

  rxpipe < sys1.help(cancel)

 Sample write to dataset, which is reused or created.

  rxpipe text Some sample data | > &user..rxpipe.test.ds cond


Command stages

 Each separate command is called a stage, each stage is separated by,
 well, a separator which by default is the vertical bar (|).

 Data is passed between the stages in the TSO stack. The callers stack
 may be used as initial input and the final stack may be written back
 to the callers stack. There is only one stack active at any one time,
 but a stack can be saved and later reloaded. You can add and delete
 stacks along the way. Using the TSO stack means that external
 commands can very easily be included, as long as they read from the
 stack and/or write to the stack.


Running RXPIPE

 RXPIPE can be executed directly from TSO READY, ISPF command panel,
 as a function in REXX like cc=RxPipe(whatever) or as TSO command like
 "RxPipe whatever".


Installing RXPIPE

 See the description in the RXPIDOC or RXPIPE members.


Some more samples

 Make a list of some SYS1 datasets, format, write to a dataset which
 will be allocated if it does not exist, then list that dataset with
 a heading. You could, of course, have done the list after the
 format, but the sample demonstrates reading a dataset also. Input to
 the BUILD command is the stack parsed into variables R (the entire
 record) and W1-W20 (words 1 to 20).

  Rxpipe dsnlist sys1.*lib fields dsname zdlvol zdldsorg zdlrecfm
         | build left(w1,44) w2 left(w3,4) w4
         | > &user..dsn.list cond
         | < &user..dsn.list
         | list Listing SYS1.*LIB

 A nice-looking table with all TSO userids (assuming that you have
 access to do LISTUSER).

  Rxpipe tso lu * tso noracf | include USER= | shift l 5
         | table bord both

  Sample display:

   +----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+
   | DB2ADM   | DB2DAL   | EDIT     | EEEE     | IBMUSER  |
   |----------|----------|----------|----------|----------|
                             . . .
   |----------|----------|----------|----------|----------|
   | USER23   | USER24   | USER25   | USER26   | USER27   |
   +----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+

 Submit a job

  rxpipe < SYSTEM.JOBLIB(BR14) | submit

 Running an ISPF skeleton, then submit the result

  rxpipe cats &user..lib a | skel listds | submit

 Find all your own VSAM clusters

  rxpipe cats &me a type cluster

 Sort a dataset

  rxpipe < my.lib.data(sorttest) | sort | > my.lib.data(sortout)

 Or just a bit of fun:

  rxpipe dsnlist sys1.*lib fields dsname | effect roll 3

  Sample display:

   SYS1.CCSSLIB
    SYS1.CMDLIB
     SYS1.COBLIB
      SYS1.CSSLIB
     SYS1.DBBLIB
    SYS1.DFQLLIB
   SYS1.DFQMLIB
    SYS1.DFQPLIB
     SYS1.DGTCLIB
      SYS1.DGTLLIB
     . . .
      SYS1.VTAMLIB