ISPF Tips & Tricks

FIND and CHANGE power tips - quotes, PREV, columns, picture strings

There are few things that are very important about FIND and CHANGE command which becomes very helpful in our day to day work:-

When we want to find string that contains quote, you can include whole sting to be search in single quote. Example to search string BUG’IS THERE you can use command:-

[ F ‘BUG’IS THERE’]

When you want to find sting in opposite direction you can use option PREV. Example:- You can use

[ F BUG PREV]

This way we can search backward.

When you want limit your search of string to specific column you can issue command like

[F BUG 16 20]

This indicates you want to search string BUG within column 16 and 20.

FIND and CHANGE command along with use of Text picture becomes extremely efficient to work around datasets

C P'=' 'TEXT’ N : Change Any Character In Column N To Specified Text C P'@' 'TEXT’ N : Change Any Alphabetic Character In Column N To Specified Text C P'#' 'TEXT’ N : Change Any Numeric Character In Column N To Specified Text C P'$' 'TEXT’ N : Change Any Special Character In Column N To Specified Text C P'^' 'TEXT’ N : Change Any Non-Blank Character In Column N To Specified Text C P'.' 'TEXT’ N : Change Any Invalid Character In Column N To Specified Text C P'-' 'TEXT’ N : Change Any Non-Numeric Character In Column N To Specified Text C P'<' 'TEXT’ N : Change Any Lower-Case Character In Column N To Specified Text C P'>' 'TEXT’ N : Change Any Upper-Case Character In Column N To Specified Text C X'NN' 'NN' N : Change Hex Numbers NN To Literal Number NN

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ISPF Tips & Tricks

FIND and CHANGE power tips - quotes, PREV, columns, picture strings