Open-source Languages & Tools for z/OS

Hi Garry,

AFAIK, there's no way to open data sets using IBM's Python built-in functions. 
You can use the functions zoautil_py.datasets.read() and zoautil_py.datasets.write() from ZOAUtil.
More examples can be found in this blog (recommended in IBM's doc for Python).
Another workaround would be to use the subprocess module to pipe the data set contents through a shell command, e.g. cat.
See example #1 and example #2 below:

example 1
import subprocess

print(subprocess.run(["cat", "//'DATA.SET.NAME'"], capture_output = True, encoding = "iso8859-1").stdout)

example 2
import subprocess

with subprocess.Popen("cat \"//'DATA.SET.NAME'\"", shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, encoding = "iso8859-1").stdout as pipe:
print(pipe.readlines())

Note that the encoding is deliberately specified as ISO8859-1 because cat will automatically convert data set contents to this encoding.

Thanks,

Alexander

import os
os.system("cat \"//'xxx.xxx(xxx)'\"")
os.system("cat \"//'xxx.xxx'\"")

Hi Garry,

According to os.system documentation it just executes the command, it doesn't capture the output and the return value is the exit status of the process.

Thanks,
Alexander