I am writing a C# program to parse a Connect:Direct file and extract from it source and destination information. I am not very fluent with Mainframe code. In particular, I am trying to understand the syntax of the destination Windows path. The following is my interpretation but there are holes that I want to fill in order to write a parser that is able to handle any valid syntax variation that I may encounter. The backslash character must be an escape character, so that two backslashes represent one. However the concatenation operation, || , seems to throw a monkey wrench in that. I presume that the slash character is the line continuation character. The quoted path also is enclosed with a backslash on each side. I'm not sure what this indicates. I'm guessing that it may mean that the enclosed string contains escape characters, suggesting that two backslashes should equal one.
NDMHGM30 PROCESS SNODE=MYSNODE PACCT='G,HG1' - &SUBS=SUBSYS(ESP2) - &DMNDH=ESPM2D.DEMANDH - &APPL=APPL(STHG102M.0) STEP1 COPY FROM (PNODE DSN=GIO.HG1.CDB.ACCTEXT.T1(0) - DISP=SHR) - COMPRESS EXT - TO (SNODE - DSN=\'\\\\MyServerName\\IMDATA\\CLASS_SOURCE\\SYSTEM_INPUTS\ || - \\\CDB\\ACCOUNT.TXT'\ - SYSOPTS="STRIP.BLANKS(NO)" - DISP=RPL) IF ( STEP1=0 ) THEN STEP1A RUN TASK (PGM=ESP, - PARM=("&SUBS NOSTACK;AJ USERREQ.GHG30GOD &APPL COMPLETE;END")) ELSE STEP1B RUN TASK (PGM=ESP, - PARM=("&SUBS NOSTACK;TR &DMNDH USER1('GHG30BAD');END")) EIF Any wrong assumptions so far? Given that, I would expect that the above path would be invalid because it would be interpreted as
\\MyServerName\IMDATA\CLASS_SOURCE\SYSTEM_INPUTS\\CDB\ACCOUNT.TXT In other words, there would be an extra backslash in one of the levels. But I know that the Connect Direct works and correctly interprets the path as
\\MyServerName\IMDATA\CLASS_SOURCE\SYSTEM_INPUTS\CDB\ACCOUNT.TXT How does the concatenation operator and/or line continuation impact the number of slashes that are needed here? What other syntax variables might also be valid that would result in the same valid Windows path?