What Is Job Control Language (JCL)?

The JCL scripting language is unparalleled by any other. It's a means to tell an operating system what sort of work you want it to perform, and it's written in such a manner that it can be used for just about anything—even if the thing in question has nothing to do with computers. It's a way to tell an operating system what kind of job you want it to do. The rumor is that JCL is being used by people who aren't programmers. They're just using it to communicate with other people, like, "Hey! I'm doing this thing" or "Do you want to go get lunch?" It's pretty cool that something so technical can be used casually. JCL is a language that runs on IBM OS/360 batch systems. It can define data set names, parameters, and system output devices. One common feature in DOS and OS JCL is the unit of work called a job. A job consists of several small steps for running a specific program. Job cards indicate the beginning of the job and define precisely how the job is to be executed. Have you ever written a JCL statement that is just too long? We know the feeling. It's like the statement is just begging to be split into multiple cards, but there's no way to do it without breaking your heart because you've already written it and don't want to rewrite it but we're here for you! You can break up your statement by using continuation cards. If your statement is more than 71 characters long, end-all JCL cards except for the last one at an instance where a comma (,) appears in column one, or use // in column one at the beginning of the continuation card. You can continue as often as you need to until all of your statements fit comfortably on one card again!