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Status Future consideration
Workspace z/OS
Categories DFSMS HSM
Created by Guest
Created on Feb 16, 2022

RELATED IDEAS

hbdelete - deleting Unix Directories recursively

We need an option with hbdelete to delete a whole directory with all files and sub-directories.

Like option -X for hlist, the same option could be implemented for hbdelete.

e.g. hbdelete -aX /u/iz01715/
All files and sub-directories will be deleted with that command.

We use a trick to delete all files:
hlist -vX /u/iz01715/ | grep FILE= | cut -c6- | xargs hbdelete -oa

Idea priority Medium
  • Guest
    Nov 14, 2025

    I agree with that. We need a recursive Option for hbdelete that deletes backup versions of all unix files and sub-directories within the specified Directory path. And that Option should be officially supported and provided by IBM.

    For the meantime I can share our Workaround that also works with unix filenames containing Special characters.

    //-+----1----+----2----+----3----+----4----+----5----+----6----+----7--
    //HBDELETE EXEC PGM=BPXBATCH,PARMDD=PARMIN,REGION=512M
    //PARMIN DD *
    SH hlist -X /path/to/my/Directory/ | grep FILE= | cut -c6- |
    sed -e "s/'/''/" | sed -e "s/[\$\"\`\\]/\\\&/g" |
    sed -e "s#.    #hbdelete -oav \"&\" ;#" | sh &;
    /*
    //* Special Chars must be escaped: $'"`\
    //* no escaping necessary for: ()[]{} _+-~=    ´?!:;.,§@%^<>
    //     -------------------------------------------------------


    Note 1: This works with Codepage EBCDIC 1047 (IBM Default USS North America).
    With other Codepages some of the characters will look different.


    Note 2: Only these special characters should be escaped in hbdelete shell commands: '$"`
    Escaping of other characters with a leading \ resulted in FILE NOT FOUND situations.

    Reply

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