Deleting records
You can delete records when in any display format, by using the DELETE primary command. This allows you to delete all the records in a data set or to delete multiple records based upon the following common factors:
- All excluded or not-excluded records (see Excluding records).
- All records that fall within a range specified by labels (see Labelling record ranges).
- All excluded or not-excluded records that fall within a labeled range.
To delete records that have a common factor:
- Establish the common factor for your records, that is, create your labels and/or exclude the required records.
- Enter the DELETE primary command, together with your choice of parameters, on the Command line.
Examples
The following command deletes all excluded records:
DELETE ALL EX
The following command deletes the next not-excluded record in the range of records from the label .LABA to the label .LABB:
DELETE NX .LABA .LABB
In CHAR, HEX, LHEX or TABL display formats, you can also delete records by using the D prefix command. Using the prefix command allows you to delete individually selected records or blocks of records that have no other common factor.
To delete individually selected records:
- Perform either of these actions:
- Position your cursor in the prefix area of the first record to be deleted and type the D or Dn prefix command, where n represents the number of records to be deleted.
- Type DD in the prefix area of the first record of a block of records to be deleted and DD in the prefix area of the last record in the block.
- Press Enter. The record or record are deleted from the data set.
Note: The deletion of these records is not saved to file until a SAVE,
FILE, END or EXIT command is issued. You can recover these deleted
records, before ending your editing session, by using the RECOVER
primary command.