IBM Tivoli NetView for z/OS Programming: Pipes - IBM notice

Stage Operands Synonym
WRITELINE WL
PIPE EDIT
Command Description
The EDIT stage is a powerful stage which enables you to make a wide variety of
changes, or edits, to a message or command within a pipeline. Possible sources of
the edit data include:
v Message or command data
v Line attributes
v Message attributes
v Literal data
With EDIT, messages or commands can be created or reformatted in any fashion
that you want. In some cases modification of the message attributes and line
attributes are also supported.
EDIT can be used to:
v Avoid creating a loop in REXX to manipulate messages.
v Improve performance. Editing within a pipeline flow is faster than driving a
command to make the changes.
v Preserve message attributes while changing the message text.
v Improve programmer productivity when writing procedures to manipulate
message data.
When used as a first stage, EDIT can be used to create multiline messages from
literals.
Although appearing complex, EDIT is a simple stage consisting of global orders
and edit phrases. Edit phrases define the action to be taken on the data flowing
through the pipeline. Global orders define the overall environment for the
subsequent edit phrases. Global orders are optional. Examples of global orders
include:
v Defining padding characters.
v Defining how message data is parsed.
v Providing messages or commands from the input stream to the edit phrase.
v Writing messages or commands from the edit phrase to the output stream.
Notes:
1. Edit phrases operate on only one line at a time. Global orders control which
line of a multiline message is processed by the edit phrase.
2. There are many environments in which edit orders can be run:
v PIPE EDIT
v WHEN statements
v REVISE statements
v Acquire
v AutoEdit
v Common Base Events
3. All orders that are valid for REVISE actions are also valid for WHEN actions,
except that when used for output only, the NEXT, NEXTWORD, and numeric
char position can be used.
Chapter 2. Pipeline Stages and Syntax 81