Why are there suddenly binary journals in my JES job output?

Question

When using SDSF on the mainframe to view the output of my batch jobs, I've always used the action character s to concatenate all the various members into one, since it's easier to see the whole job output together:

SDSF STATUS DISPLAY ALL CLASSES    
COMMAND INPUT ===>                 
PREFIX=*  DEST=(ALL)  OWNER=PAX
NP   JOBNAME  JobID    Owner    Prt
     PAX      TSU39756 PAX        1
s_   PAXJOB01 JOB39757 PAX         
     PAXJOB02 JOB39759 PAX         

I've done this manually but also with scripts running on Linux to screen-scrape job output for automated status updates.

However, just today, I started seeing binary information in that output and went investigating (using ? instead of s, to get a list of all related members). There are some members that I've never seen before:

SDSF JOB DATA SET DISPLAY - JOB PAXJOB01 (JOB39757)  
COMMAND INPUT ===>                                   
PREFIX=*  DEST=(ALL)  OWNER=PAX  SYSNAME=*       
NP   DDNAME   StepName ProcStep DSID Owner    C Dest 
     JESJCLIN                      1 PAX      A      
     JESMSGLG JES2                 2 PAX      A LOCAL
     JESJCL   JES2                 3 PAX      A LOCAL
     JESYSMSG JES2                 4 PAX      A LOCAL
     $INTTEXT JES2                 5 PAX      A      
     $JOURNAL                      6 PAX      A      
     STDIN    RUNLOG             101 PAX      A      
     STDOUT   RUNLOG             102 PAX      A LOCAL

Specifically, JESJCLIN, $INTTEXT, $JOURNAL and STDIN are the members that are new, and the journal is the one containing the binary information.

I want to know what controls this behaviour since it's screwing up my automated processes. I'd rather not have to ? in to the above screen and extract only the outputs I'm interested in since that will change per job and require some heavy configuration - it's far easier to get the concatenated job output, provided I can get back to the original behaviour.

Answer 1

This is controlled by the command INPUT ON|OFF.

With INPUT ON, it will list (and combine when using s) the input and output members. With INPUT OFF, it will simply list and combine the output members.

So, in order to ensure you only see the output members, execute INPUT OFF before selecting the job.