Advantage of VB over FB records.

[Mahesh Ayyar]

Hi,

Can anyone help me to know the 'significance' of Variable Blocked records compared to Fixed block records? Is there some rare 'advantage' to choose VB type record format?
If yes, please let me know. It might be a silly question to ask but ...

[William Collins]

What is unclear? If you have multiple record-types of different sizes (or even one record-type, with a varying length) then you can't use RECFM=Fx. Therefore, rather than just give up and go home, we use RECFM=Vx.

[Robert Sample]

As pointed out, there are times when you have no choice but to use variable or fixed records for your data set. If you have the choice, the advantages will depend upon the characteristics of the data. For example, if the maximum record size is large but the average record is small, variable could save a lot of disk space. If the average record size is close to the maximum record size, then fixed might be easier to process.

[Mahesh Ayyar]

I get your point William, though I'm trying to understand the concept.

A per the point from Robert, if we have a data-set which has say LRECL=100 and many records fall under 96-100 length, mkaing it a fixed block by filling the shorter record with SPACES (asuming it won't hurt the system) will be a good choice?