hercexport - tool to list and unload a set of DASD

I wanted to have access to all text files of my MVS 3.8J system on my Linux host system, so that I can inspect them with the usual Unix tools like grep. The dasdpdsu program unloads one PDS, and dasdls lists all datasets of a volume. So it's in principle straightforward to write a script which

The script hercexport, which I just added to the wfjm/herc-tools project, does exactly this. Consult the hercexport documentation for further information on functionality and available options.

hercexport requires a Hercules version which supports the extended listing options of dasdls, especially -hdr. It works with the dasdls coming with Fish-Git/hyperion and rbowler/spinhawk (but see issue) and does not work with hercules-390/hyperion as of today (see issue) and tk4- as of update 08.

In case the Hercules installation used for normal operations does not provide the required dasdls functionality, it is possible to use dasdls and dasdpdsu from a different path. If the environment variable DASDTOOLS_PATH is defined, these two utility programs will be taken from there and not searched via PATH.

hercexport is currently at alpha-level at best, has been tested

There is certainly plenty of room for improvement, so feel free to clone the wfjm/herc-tools project, add enhancements, and send me a pull request.

hercexport and tk4- takeout

A complete export of a tk4- update 08 system is available under

The compressed tarball is 148 MB and will expand to 61000 files and 1249 MB. It contains all PDS members from

See section Usage - Full export in the hercexport documentation for further information.

I find it highly convenient to have the full MVS code base easily accessible on my host system and hope you enjoy this too.

For original posting to Yahoo! Group - Hercules-390 see topic 83578. Dead link since 2020-12-15: Yahoo! Groups was discontinued by Verizon.
For original posting to Yahoo! Group - Turnkey-MVS see topic 10884. Dead link since 2020-12-15: Yahoo! Groups was discontinued by Verizon.