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Status Future consideration
Workspace z/OS
Categories DFSMS Cloud Data Access
Created by Guest
Created on Jun 26, 2026

RELATED IDEAS

Feature Request: Native line-feed (LF/CRLF) insertion for ASCII text transfers in GDKUTIL

 

Summary:
Provide a native parameter or keyword in GDKUTIL (e.g., inside SYSIN or the provider JSON) that automatically appends line-terminating characters (LF or CRLF) to record boundaries during text-converted uploads, mirroring legacy FTP ASCII transmission behavior.

 

Business Problem / Use Case:
We are actively trying to modernize our mainframe workflows by migrating legacy file transfers from standard FTP over to GDKUTIL (Cloud Data Access) for direct cloud object storage integration (such as AWS S3 or Azure Blob).

However, during text transfers using the CONVERT keyword, GDKUTIL streams z/OS sequential datasets as an unbroken binary block payload. This results in the target cloud file appearing as a single, massive continuous line of text, completely stripping the record boundaries.

While FORMAT(RECORD) exists, it uses IBM-specific prefixes (IGGRPFX) meant for mainframe cloud archiving. It does not produce a standard, line-wrapped flat file that external cloud ecosystems (like AWS Lambda, Python scripts, or Linux servers) can natively parse.

 

Current Pain Points & Workarounds:
To achieve parity with what legacy FTP does automatically, developers must inject manual pre-processing steps into their JCL, such as using DFSORT to append trailing hex line feeds (X'25') or copying files to Unix System Services (USS) via OCOPY first. This introduces significant development overhead, extra disk space requirements for temporary datasets, and unnecessary processing cycles. Many teams are delaying their migration to GDKUTIL due to this friction.

 

Proposed Solution:
Introduce a new parameter—either a SYSIN keyword like CONVERT(TEXT) or a provider JSON attribute—that instructs the z/OS Client Web Enablement Toolkit / GDKUTIL layer to dynamically inject standard line-terminator bytes (x'0A' for LF or x'0D0A' for CRLF) at the end of each logical record (LRECL) during transmission. This would allow a seamless, zero-rework migration from FTP to GDKUTIL for cloud-bound data.

Idea priority High

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