Swapbar

While at SHARE, I picked up another new feature available in ISPF in z/OS 1.10 … The SWAPBAR command. This command will build a line at the bottom of your ISPF screen showing all of your split screens. It’s a little like SWAP LIST, except the screens are always available without having to enter that command or hit a PF key to pull up that pop-up window. The screen names on the swapbar are “point-and-shoot” – so you can move your cursor to one of them and hit enter, and boom – you go directly to that screen.

Hint: To best utilize this feature, make sure your 3270 emulator has a mouse button set to “move cursor and enter”. My emulator has the left double-click on the mouse set to do that, so all I have to do to switch to a particular screen is point my mouse at the name of it on my swapbar and double-click.

Move/Copy to Multiple Target Locations in ISPF

Today, let’s take a break away from CICS for a moment and look at a new feature in ISPF. How many times have you edited a file in ISPF and had a need to copy a line to multiple locations? We had to copy the first source line, select where to copy it to, hit enter, copy that line, go to the next target area, hit enter, and repeat as many times as necessary. A bit of a pain, but that’s just the way the ISPF editor worked, and we accepted it.

In ISPF in z/OS 1.10, instead of being limited to one location at a time as the target of a copy or move line command, you can now select multiple locations! This is a handy new feature. Enter C or M (or CC or MM) in the prefix area on your source line(s), and enter AK or BK in the prefix area on the first target line(s); on the final target line’s prefix area, enter an A or B like you always have. Excellent! You can thank the IBM ISPF guys in person at SHARE in Austin!