The EDIT command on VM

The following procedure assumes that you use an editor that can be called by an exec operating under ISPF. The EDIT TABLE command calls the Table Editor, and does not require a text editor.

To make an editor available for the EDIT command:

1. Write an exec to invoke the editor, given the name of the file to be edited. For example, with the following command, QMF calls the exec, XYZEDIT, to edit the data set, USERA.FILE:

   XYZEDIT USERA FILE A1

2. Allocate the file USERA FILE A1 using the FILEDEF command specifying the file name of DSQEDIT. The FILEDEF needs to be allocated prior to invoking the editor. Therefore, the FILEDEF needs to be part of the QMF invocation process, or a FILEDEF needs to be established before invoking the EDIT command.
3. Instruct the users on how to invoke the editor through the EDIT command. A command would like like this:

   EDIT yyyy (EDITOR=xxxxxxxxx)

   where yyyy is either PROC or QUERY. Only the current procedure or query can be edited. xxxxxxxxx is the name of the exec created to invoke the editor.

   The file you can use can also be used for the ISPF/PDF editor.

Important: If you edit a procedure or query, and the resulting object is too large to fit in QMF's work area, QMF truncates the object and displays an error message. QMF saves the entire object in a file associated with the FILEDEF DSQEDIT. Remember that the edit transfer file described by the DSQEDI filedef cannot be associated to a disk that is used in the CMS shared file system. To bring the object into QMF, the user needs to issue a RESET DATA command.