Introduction



Having reviewed a question on LinkedIn about what a particular User Abend and Reason Code might meant I thought I would compose this set of pages.

The information herein is relevant to z/OS.

Types of program termination



System ABENDS

There are two types of these, as will be explained shortly, as they can be triggered either by the Operating System or the Hardware. In both cases an initial description of Abend Code can be found in the IBM System Codes manual.

User Abends

Historically these are attributable to the Application Program and hence would be documented in the program's Operating Instructions. Both Fortran and PLI, converted System Abends into User Abends, and this process has been extended to include Enterprise COBOL with the advent of Language Environment (LE).

non-Zero COND CODES

From a human perspective these might be considered abnormal termination, but as far as z/OS is concerned they constitute normal termination and the meaning of the various codes should be documented in the program's Operating Instructions.

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