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Introduction

The AR370 archive utility is a program that is used to create or maintain a collection of object modules called an AR370 archive. AR370 archives have a file organization that permits them to be used as COOL autocall libraries, supporting autocall of extended names.

Logically speaking, an AR370 archive is organized as a collection of members, identified by a member name that resembles a filename. The member names serve only to identify the members to the AR370 utility. Otherwise, member names are not significant and do not affect the autocall process. For each object module contained in an AR370 archive, the AR370 utility records the names of external symbols defined or referenced in the member (including external objects with extended names). This allows COOL to find the member that defines a particular symbol. No connection is needed between an AR370 member name and the external symbol names defined by the member.

Physically, each AR370 archive is composed of three parts:

header

contains information such as the date of the last modification and the release number of the AR370 utility that made the modification.

member archive

contains a copy of each file added to the library. (For AR370 archives, unlike OS/390 partitioned data sets, the order of members may be significant.)

symbol table

contains a list of each external symbol defined or referred to by any member of the archive.

When adding or replacing members, the AR370 utility inserts a copy of each input file into the member archive. The utility also searches the external symbol dictionary (ESD) of each input file, creates a sorted list of ESD entries, and inserts the list in the library symbol table. The library symbol table is used by COOL to search an archive efficiently for ESD symbols and extended names.

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