Talk:Concatenation

Strange etymology
"Concate" & "nate" = "Concatenate"

Is this a kind of joke? The etymology is surely from Latin catena, a chain.

S. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.168.172.132 (talk) 06:04, 26 November 2002 (UTC)

Pronunciation
British English is my native language, and I have no idea how you pronounce it so I avoid using it in conversation. I'm sure I'm not alone. Can someone do the pronunciation stuff? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.192.147.211 (talk) 10:40, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

The correct pronunciation is "con"-"cat"-"tin"-"ate", just as it appears more or less. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.205.76.101 (talk) 16:41, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi
HI :) —Preceding unsigned commentSDF added by 212.219.76.100 (talk) 10:22, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

According to Merriam-Webster, concatenate comes from the Latin concatenare (to link together), which comes from the Latin com- + catena. Nschoem 01:45, 26 June 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nschoem (talk • contribs)

It just means to match the correct sequence of one data string to the same sequence in another data string...from 2 to 30 data strings long...

Syntax concatenation!! Everybody knows that!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.20.224.14 (talk) 21:03, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

In Mainframe
Mainframe concatenation refers to defining and usage of a sequence of libraries for the purposes of accessing objects in those libraries.

CONCAT
CONCAT is a native command of the z/OS operating system which is used to define ISPF/TSO library allocations.

CONCAT can add libraries to any standard ISPF DD including SYSPROC SYSEXEC ISPPLIB ISPSLIB and ISPMLIB

This is not true, globally. If you try the command on a base system, I used IBM DEMO (DEMOpkg in Montpellier, France & DEMOmvs in Austin, Texas, USA) to issue TSO HELP CONCAT and you get... IKJ56802I HELP NOT AVAILABLE+ IKJ56802I COMMAND CONCAT NOT FOUND, FOR MORE HELP ENTER HELP

Same with CONCATD. Commands (see SYS1.HELP) issued as standard (at least at my friendly IBM locations) are... CONNECT CONSOLE CONSPROF CONVXLAT

At a non-IBM site I tried the TSO HELP CONCAT and it displayed FUNCTION THE CONCAT COMMAND IS USED TO CONCATENATE UP TO 9 ALREADY ALLOCATED DATA SETS. SYNTAX CONCAT (FILE1,FILE2,...FILEN) OPERANDS FILE1 - THE NAME OF THE FIRST FILE OF THE CONCATENATION. THIS WILL ALSO BE THE NAME OF THE RESULTANT CON CATENATED FILE. FILE2,...FILEN - THE NAMES OF THE FILES TO BE CONCATENATED TO FILE1 IN THE ORDER OF CONCATENATION. AT LEAST ONE NAME MUST BE SPECIFIED, BUT NOT MORE THAN 8. Nothing for CONCATD

83.226.154.74 (talk) 08:33, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

The CONCAT that is referred to is probably free-ware from the CBTTAPE. Whether or not one of these is installed is a matter for the site. Unfortunately there are several varieties of the CONCAT (and other spellings) command there, which have differing syntaxes. If you want a native concatenation facility it's probably best to call BPXWDYN in a REXX program.

Depending on the environment is which it is used, other possible TSO commands to create a psuedo-concatenation are TSOLIB (for STEPLIB), ALTLIB (SYS[U]PROC, SYS[U]EXEC) and LIBDEF (ISP....).

IBM / Kyndryl has a CONCATD command which is installed in some managed clients. 121.200.6.208 (talk) 22:48, 20 June 2021 (UTC) James

CONCATD
CONCATD is a utility written and maintained by IBM which extends the functionality provided by CONCAT.

The CONCATD command performs the following functions: - Dynamically concatenates a data set or list of data sets before an existing or after an existing allocation. - Deconcatenates from an existing ddname allocation. - Creates an new allocation, if none exists. - Frees the whole file, if the caller deconcatenates all data sets of an existing allocation. - Lists the file allocation, if the file keyword and the list operand were used. - Shows the CONCATD version, if invoked without operands - Shows the CONCATD syntax, if invoked with an ? as operand - Allocates the file with the permanently allocated attribute, if the PERM keyword was entered, or if the file already exists with an permanently allocated attribute. - Displays all the members of PO concatenated data sets - Displays all the ENQueuers when an OLD allocation fails

Common usage of CONCATD is to concatenate personal libraries before libraries defined by the default system logon PROC. This allows a user to run CLIST and REXX programs without needing to specify the library where the code is.

NOTE: This is not true, globally. If you try the command on a base system, I used IBM DEMO (DEMOpkg in Montpellier, France & DEMOmvs in Austin, Texas, USA) to issue TSO HELP CONCATD and you get... IKJ56802I HELP NOT AVAILABLE+ IKJ56802I COMMAND CONCATD NOT FOUND, FOR MORE HELP ENTER HELP Same with CONCAT. Commands (see SYS1.HELP) issued as standard (at least at my friendly IBM locations) are... CONNECT CONSOLE CONSPROF CONVXLAT

Note however that at a non-IBM site I tried TSO HELP CONCAT and it displayed FUNCTION THE CONCAT COMMAND IS USED TO CONCATENATE UP TO 9 ALREADY ALLOCATED DATA SETS. SYNTAX CONCAT (FILE1,FILE2,...FILEN) OPERANDS FILE1 - THE NAME OF THE FIRST FILE OF THE CONCATENATION. THIS WILL ALSO BE THE NAME OF THE RESULTANT CON CATENATED FILE. FILE2,...FILEN - THE NAMES OF THE FILES TO BE CONCATENATED TO FILE1 IN THE ORDER OF CONCATENATION. AT LEAST ONE NAME MUST BE SPECIFIED, BUT NOT MORE THAN 8. Nothing for CONCATD

See CALL BPXWDYN which does have a CONCAT function, although I have not yet tried this. 83.226.154.74 (talk) 08:36, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

This is the difference between issuing a command to execute code in a specific location: TSO EXEC 'MY.USERID(MYREXX)'

versus issuing a command to execute a program for which may be in any library currently concatenated to the user's ISPF/TSO profile: TSO MYREXX

In the second example, the system checks in each library concatenated to the user's ISPF/TSO profile (in this example the SYSEXEC libraries are checked).

More Information
For more information about the CONCAT command, the following command can be issued on any Z/OS mainframe: TSO HELP CONCAT

CONCAT Examples
CONCATD F(SYSPROC) DA(MY.CLIST) CLIST example:

ALLOC DD(MYCLIST) DA(          +          '&SYSUID..CLIST'        +                   ) SHR CONCAT MYCLIST SYSPROC

REXX example:

/* REXX */ "CONCATD FILE(SYSPROC) DSN('MY.CLIST') BEFORE"

"+ (programming)" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect + (programming). Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. signed,Rosguill talk 17:31, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

can we cut the Implementation section?
The section has no encyclopedic information; it currently contains only information tantamount to the saying “If the rooster crows at the break of day, the weather may change or stay the same way.”. Can we delete it? ◅ Sebastian 13:50, 11 August 2023 (UTC)