How to Compare PDS Directories

Table of Contents

Types of Comparisons

You can use SUPERC, which is part of ISPF/PDF, to compare the directories of two partitioned data sets. SUPERC is available interactively under the Utilities menu withinISPFand in OS/390 batch.

SUPERC permits comparisons even when data sets being compared have redundant data such as blank lines, duplicate words, and duplicate characters in binary data.

Types of Comparisons

SUPERC offers four compare levels. They are:

File Compare: Summarizes differences between two files being compared
Line Compare: Record oriented. Shows matching, inserted, deleted and reformatted lines. Most useful for comparing lines of program source code. Can be used to help detect regressions and to validate appropriateness of code modifications.
Word Compare: Reveals differences in data strings delimited by spaces and punctuation marks, such as commas. Finds matching words, even when they are on different lines. Most useful for comparing two text data sets and tracking revisions in text documents.
Byte Compare: Finds differences in bytes. Best for comparing machine-readable and unformatted data.

Output Choices

Two output choices are available: A listing of the results of a search or comparison, and/or a structured data set containing update information.

Process Options

More than 30 process options are available, to specify where and how searches and compares are made, and how output is displayed or used. Different process options are available under each of the comparison levels described above. Note: More than one level of compare may be performed on two data sets. However, results may not be identical because of the methods used for different compare levels.

See the IBM manual ISPF/PDF Guide and Reference, SuperC Reference, for further details on compare levels and more information about SUPERC, including how to search for specific terms within a PDS. Figure 1 shows the JCL needed to run SUPERC in batch. You should replace "data.set.one" and "data.set.two" with the names of the two partitioned data sets you want to compare.

Figure 3. Using SUPERC to Compare PDS Directories

//jobname JOB (,,time,lines),'your name',CLASS=class,REGION=2M 
/*ROUTE  PRINT node.location 
//SUPERC EXEC PGM=ISRSUPC, 
//       PARM=(DELTAL,LINECMP,'','') 
//OLDDD  DD DSN=data.set.one,DISP=SHR 
//NEWDD  DD DSN=data.set.two,DISP=SHR 
//OUTDD  DD SYSOUT=A 
/*


How to Create a Partitioned Data Set		Examining PDS Directories and Members with `PDSLIST`