SPFLite - V3.0.24069 2024-03-09

Syntax

Operands

There are two basic formats for the FIND command as shown in the syntax boxes above. The first is used to alter the basic search context as it relates to use of the WORD option in normal searching. This is covered below under the heading  "Search Context".

The following operand descriptions are for the normal use of the FIND command.

 

Abbreviations and Aliases

FIND can also be spelled as F

PREFIX can also be spelled as PRE or PFX

SUFFIX can also be spelled as SUF or SFX

WORDS can also be spelled as WORD

CHARS can also be spelled as CHAR

 

Description

You can use the FIND command to locate line(s) within the file which contain a specified string. 

To find the next occurrence of the letters ELSE without specifying any other qualifications:

On the Command line, type:

FIND ELSE

Press Enter. Since no other qualifications were specified, the letters ELSE can be:

• Uppercase or a mixture of uppercase and lowercase (assuming that CASE T is in effect)
• At the beginning of a word (prefix), the end of a word (suffix), or the entire word (word).
• In either an excluded or a non excluded line.
• Anywhere within the current boundaries.

To find the next occurrence of the letters ELSE, but only if the letters are uppercase:

On the Command line, type:

FIND C'ELSE'

Press Enter. This type of search is called a character string search (note the C that precedes the search string) because it finds the next occurrence of the letters ELSE only if the letters are in uppercase. However, since no other qualifications were specified, the letters can be found anywhere in the file, as outlined in the preceding list.

For more information, including other types of search strings, see Finding and Changing Data and Specifying a Picture or Format String.

Note:  When the FIND search operand is a Regular Expression (a string with an R type code) and reverse-order searching is done with PREV or LAST, only the left-most occurrence on any given line is found. That is, the command

       FIND R'ABC' PREV

is treated as if it were specified as

       FIND LEFT R'ABC' PREV

and

       FIND R'ABC' LAST

is treated as if it were specified as

       FIND LEFT R'ABC' LAST

Note:  FIND cannot be used to find zero-length blank lines based on a string. See NFIND for an example of how to do this.

Setting the search context with FIND WORDS and FIND CHARS

Operands

WORD | WORDS    |

CHAR | CHARS

Note: WORD and WORDS are interchangeable, as are CHAR and CHARS.

Description

This variation of the FIND command is a special extension to the syntax of the FIND command, and must be specified exactly as shown, with no other regular FIND operands.

FIND WORDS is used to set the default search context to WORD mode.

FIND CHARS is used to set the default search context to CHARS mode. 

This means that whenever a FIND, CHANGE or similar command is used, and none of the operands CHARS, WORD, PREFIX or SUFFIX are specified, the FIND or CHANGE command will proceed using the default assigned here.

This is convenient, for example,  when many FIND and CHANGE commands are required that need WORD mode. By setting the search context to WORD mode, the operand WORD can be omitted from the individual FIND and CHANGE commands, making them shorter and faster to type.

CHARS mode is the installation default, and is how ISPF normally operates. The main reason to issue FIND CHARS would be to change back to the standard active after a FIND WORDS command had been issued.

Setting the search context in this manner is only a default, applied when none of the operands CHARS, WORD, PREFIX or SUFFIX are specified. Any of these keywords can be used on a FIND or CHANGE to override the current default search context, whatever it may be at that time.

When the default search context is set to WORDS, a W will appear the C/T indicator on the status line that shows the current CASE C/T mode. Thus, depending on the CASE mode, the indicator will show either  C  W  or  T  W  on the status line.

If you issue a RESET command with no operands, the default search context will revert to the system-wide default (either WORDS or CHARS) that is defined on the Options - General screen using the checkbox, Use WORD as the default for FIND/CHANGE commands. If that default is CHARS (checkbox not checked) the indicator will revert to either C or T on the status line. 

The search context checkbox defined on the Options - General screen is the default when a file is opened. You can set the search option to FIND CHARS or FIND WORDS any time you wish on any file tab. This setting is not saved in the profile.

Line Range / Pending Copy Conflict - a Play in Three Acts

Synopsis

• When there is a pending C/CC or M/MM block, FIND will keep the block pending, so you can use FIND, RFIND and/or scrolling commands to locate a place for the pending lines to be copied into. This understanding provides SPFLite with ISPF compatibility, and is the way FIND with pending C/CC blocks is commonly used on the mainframe.

• When there is a pending C/CC or M/MM block, a new alias of FIND called FF will use the  block to define the range of lines to be searched for, instead of keeping the lines pending. This is how FIND used to work before a recent change was made to it. (This new alias FF is not the File Manager command of the same name. See the final note at the end of this section for more information.)

This new arrangement resolves a long-running conflict that pitted IBM ISPF compatibility with our desire for SPFLite to provide as many productivity extensions as possible. We appreciate everyone's patience as we worked through this issue and "threaded the needle the right way". 

It is quite a tale, and here it is, told in three acts ...

Act I

The extended line-range-operand support provided by SPFLIte allowed you to specify a line range that a primary command is to use, either by specific command line operands (like .FROM .TO  or .20 .250), or by marking the line range with C/CC line commands.

This extended line-range-operand support was a general feature that applied to all primary commands that took a line range, including FIND. Therein lies the rub ...

Act II

It was found that a common use case in ISPF was to first define a block of lines using C/CC, and then use the FIND command to locate a destination for those lines to be copied into, a task usually involving repetitive FIND commands (via RFIND) and/or manual scrolling. By SPFLite making the general assumption (for every primary command, including FIND) that a CC or MM block always defined a line range, that assumption prevented this commonly-practiced ISPF use case from being performed.

Here's an example of this problem:

Suppose you want to copy line 2500 to some other part of the file, a long way from line 2500. You're not sure where the right place is to copy the line, but you do know there's a string of ABC somewhere near where the new line needs to go. Also, there's more than one ABC in the file, and so just finding one of them is not enough; you have to find the right ABC.

Incidentally, there is no string of ABC on line 2500 itself. 

So, you wanted to do this:

Scene I

• Enter a C line command on line 2500
• Go to the top of file, with an UP MAX, or maybe with a mapped key like Alt Page-Up or Ctrl Page-Up
• Enter on the command line, FIND "ABC" to find the next ABC in the file
• You might find the right ABC, or you might not. You may have to keep searching, probably with RFIND (mapped to the F5 key) or maybe by manually scrolling up and down.
• All this time, there a message on the screen, "Pending Destination line range command", because the C is waiting for you to decide where you want to put an A or B somewhere, to finish what the C started.
• Finally, you make the decision, pick a line, put an A command on it, press Enter, and the line is copied.

Well, that's what you wanted to do, and in IBM ISPF, that's how it always worked. 

However, because of the general feature (added in "Act I"), every primary command that took a line range (including FIND), treated a pending C/CC or M/MM block as defining the range of lines that the primary command (FIND, in this case) was to operate on. 

Thus, what actually happened was this:

Scene II

• Enter a C line command on line 2500
• Go to the top of file, with an UP MAX or maybe with a mapped key like Alt Page-Up or Ctrl Page-Up
• Enter on the command line, FIND "ABC" to find the next ABC in the file
• Because there is a pending C command on line 2500, FIND decides that it is supposed to only look at line 2500 !
• Line 2500, the only line FIND inspected, does not have a string of ABC - not that you wanted to look at line 2500 anyway
• FIND finds nothing, and reports, "Bottom of data reached".

Hmm ... that's not right. 

What happened in Scene II is not ISPF compatible, and doesn't do anything useful. So, the FIND command was recently exempted from the general line-range-defining role of C/CC and M/MM, in the name of ISPF compatibility, to make it possible to FIND with an active/pending C/CC block present. Because of that exemption, FIND with a pending C/CC or M/MM works like Scene I shows it to work. 

 

Act III

The exemption for FIND that was added in Act II is great, and solves a big problem. However, that exemption for FIND removed the convenience of SPFLite's ability of FIND to use C/CC and M/MM as general command line-ranges, which is also an important and valuable use case - too useful to give up.

For example, suppose you wanted to quickly count the number of left parentheses in the first 100 lines of the file. 

You would like to be able to do something this:

Scene III

• Put a line command of C\ on line 100. This applies the C command from line 100 back to line 1
• Issue the command FIND '(' ALL
• You would like the command to issue a message like, CHARS '(' found 45 times

But, that won't work, because of the exemption added in Act II. The block of lines is just "left hanging", and you get a message, "Pending Destination line command range". So, it doesn't do anything wrong - it just doesn't do anything period.

To restore that capability, a FIND command alias of FF has been defined. 

What FF does is to treat any pending C/CC or M/MM line commands as defining the find operation's line range to search for, rather than keeping those lines as "pending" while scrolling through the data. So, the new FF command works like the old FIND command did, before the FIND exemption was put in. That's because FF uses  pending C/CC or M/MM line commands in the "general" way that other SPFLite primary commands do, and not like the "exempted FIND" command does.

In other words, the following now will work:

Scene IV

• Put a line command of C\ on line 100. This applies the C command from line 100 back to line 1
• Issue the command FF '(' ALL
• The command will issue a message like, CHARS '(' found 45 times

Other than the different name, and the different way that C/CC and M/MM blocks are handled, FF and FIND are the same command and accept exactly the same parameters.

Note:  The Find in Files command FF should not be confused with the new FF alias for the edit primary command FIND; the two commands are not related. However, if you issue a File Manager command of FF ABC, and then open a file listed in the Found FIles FILELIST, you can quickly find the string ABC by retrieving the FF command (usually by the command mapped to F12). Assuming there is no outstanding CC or MM blocks in the edit file, the FF ABC in the edit session will find the string ABC within the file, the same way that a regular FIND edit command would. This can be a time-saving shortcut.

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