Inserting comments in a statement

You can specify comments by inserting lines that start with /* and terminate with */

Comments can use multiple lines, or be included anywhere within a statement. Unless the comment is started at column 1, the comment start must be preceded by at least one blank character between it, and the text it follows. For example:

/* -----------------------------------------------+
 | This is a multi line comment                   |
 +------------------------------------------------*/

COMMAND RESOURCE KEYWORD(VAL) /* TAIL COMMENT */

COMMAND RESOURCE /* EMBEDDED COMMENT */ KEYWORD(/*)

Note: Because /* in the KEYWORD(/*) is not preceded by a space, it is treated as the value for the keyword not as the start of a comment.

Multi-line comments cannot span a text mode block of data, as in the following example:

JSSTART ADID('CRITBATCH       ') IA(0805121738) OPNO(001)
JSJCL DLM(-END-OF-INPUT-TEXT-) /* Stop JCL
//*>OPC SCAN          
//*>OPC TABLE NAME=TESTVAR 
//* Y                          */ 
-END-OF-INPUT-TEXT-

Because the DLM keyword indicates the following line is text it is contradictory to the open comment leading into the text. Text data in Workload Automation Programming Language is treated as unprocessed input, so any comments within the text are passed into the object it is defining. So in this case the open comment will lead to a syntax error.

To comment out the data entirely, the following example shows the correct form:

JSSTART ADID('CRITBATCH       ') IA(0805121738) OPNO(001)
JSJCL MEMBER(MYJOB) /* DLM(-END-OF-INPUT-TEXT-)  
//*>OPC SCAN 
//*>OPC TABLE NAME=TESTVAR
//* Y
-END-OF-INPUT-TEXT-          */

Note: The comment start characters override all other directives, so if you want to include /* within one of your statements with a preceding space, then you must alter the comment start character using the OPTIONS COMSTART statement and similarly with OPTIONS COMEND to use something other than */ to end a comment. Consider that changing the default comment characters can affect the use of predefined members such as EQQFLALL, which contains many comments in the

/*
*/

format.

The /* value can be included within a statement, provided that is not preceded by a blank character.

For example, the OK variable will work, the NOTOK variable will be treated as comment from column 33 onwards:

JCLVVAR VARNAME(OK) DEFAULT('/*') SETUP(N)
JCLVVAR VARNAME(NOTOK) DEFAULT(' /*') SETUP(N)