The System Sort Utility
SORT has one to eight input files, which may be of any valid record length. It has one output file, of any stated length, which may contain from zero to 8 million-plus records.
A sort can contain entire records or just 3-byte addresses which point to records in an associated file. This was called an address-out file or ADDROUT. When using an Addrout, the program read in these 3-byte addresses and then fetched associated records from the master file.
A programmer who wanted the benefits of a System/38-style logical file would use an Addrout with a RETAIN-S disposition:
// LOAD MYPROG
// FILE NAME-ADDROUT,LABEL-WS.SORT,RETAIN-S
// RUN
After the program finishes, the Addrout file doesn't exist anymore. It has been "scratched," or set to RETAIN-S, meaning the system auto-deletes it.
Read more about this topic: IBM System/34, SORT
Famous quotes containing the words system, sort and/or utility:
“The individual protests against the world, but he doesn’t get beyond protest, he is just a single protester. When he wants to be more than that, he has to counter power with power, he has to oppose the system with another system.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“You say your own soul supplies you with some sort of an idea or image of God. But at the same time you acknowledge you have, properly speaking, no idea of your own soul. You even affirm that spirits are a sort of beings altogether different from ideas. Consequently that no idea can be like a spirit. We have therefore no idea of any spirit.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)
“Moral sensibilities are nowadays at such cross-purposes that to one man a morality is proved by its utility, while to another its utility refutes it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)