CL Tricks

Some stuff that makes it easier to work directly with commands in CL…

Wildcards

Typing just the first (probably easy guessable) part of a command, followed by an asterisk (*) and pressing Enter makes the system present a list of all available commands with an accompanying short explanation. Type a 1 into the corresponding line and and press Enter to invoke that command.

Multiply Expanded Help Facility

• Press F4 instead of Enter to execute a command opens up a form for completing the command options.
  • Pressing F4 while the cursor is at a specific position opens up another panel with a brief description of available choices.
  • Pressing F1 while the cursor is at a specific position opens up a help text for that particular option. This also is true for the secondary F4-invoked screen.
    • Pressing F20 (Shift-F8) zooms the help text window over the complete screen.

To learn how the command will be actually called after filling out the corresponding form, press F14 (Shift-F2). Pressing Enter will not execute the command but take you one step back to the former screen.

Default options for commands can be changed with chgcmddft.

To learn the keywords along the displayed form, press F11.