Wednesday, April 18, 2007

z390 SUPERZAP utility available in v1.3.03

A new version of the old SUPERZAP file utility is available in z390 v1.3.03. This utility is distributed as open source as part of z390 and consists of about 850 lines of structured mainframe macro assembler. The utility supports the verification, replacement, and dumping of file contents in hex, ASCII, or EBCDIC. Files up to 2 GB on Windows or Linux are supported. Addition commands are supported to search for hex or text values and a loop command allows repeating search, verify, replace, and/or dump commands until verify fails or end of file is reached. For more information on this utility visit www.superzap.net.

This utility illustrates the power of structured mainframe assembler for use in utilities and applications running on not only on mainframes but also Windows and Linux platforms. SUPERZAP uses new extension in z390 v1.3.03 to set DCB record lengths up to 31 bits thus allowing utility to read or write an entire file up to 2 GB with a single GET or PUT.

SUPERZAP has been around as a mainframe utility from at least the early S/360 days for applying Private Temporary Fixes (PTF's) to operating system code. Today it is called SPZAP or AMASPZAP and is documented in the DFSMS Diagnosis Tools manual. See reference links on the www.superzap.net page.

Don Higgins
don@higgins.net