IBM System/34 - SORT - The System Sort Utility

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:

    There are obvious places in which government can narrow the chasm between haves and have-nots. One is the public schools, which have been seen as the great leveler, the authentic melting pot. That, today, is nonsense. In his scathing study of the nation’s public school system entitled “Savage Inequalities,” Jonathan Kozol made manifest the truth: that we have a system that discriminates against the poor in everything from class size to curriculum.
    Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)

    The nearest the modern general or admiral comes to a small-arms encounter of any sort is at a duck hunt in the company of corporation executives at the retreat of Continental Motors, Inc.
    C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)

    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)