FTP and get row count from a file

Question

FTP Server - xxx.xx.xxx.xxx (Mainframe)

Unix

$> ftp xxx.xx.xxx.xxx 
$> get filename 

Problem

In the utility , we want to get row count from a file.

It can be done by :

• Get the file in UNIX path using ftp

• Apply wc -l on that file.

But we have few issues on the above technique:

• Space issue (File size > 100 GB).

• Resource and time consuming.

Any easy solution to get row-count from a file using FTP.

Answer 1

USS on the mainframe has the wc utility installed. Assuming you have to run your utility on a distributed system you could use FTP to submit a JCL job that used bpx batch to run the wc utility on the USS file you’re interested in. You could pipe the wc output to a file and then retrieve that file for use in your utility.

Answer 2

Suggestion:

Create some script or program that periodically check the number of line and write it to a file, eg number_of_line.txt

Ftp the file number_of_line.txt and extract the information.