Q: There is a file that's placed into a directory in my IFS on a daily basis. Every day the file has a different name! How can I find out the file's name so that I can process it?

A: There are a few different ways to do it.

The easiest way is to use QShell to list the names of files in your directory to a PF that you can read from your CL program. Here's a sample program that does that:

PGM
       DCL VAR(&FILELIB) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(10) VALUE('MYLIB')
       DCL VAR(&CMD)     TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(500)
       DCL VAR(&IFSPATH) TYPE(*CHAR) LEN(50) VALUE('/path/with/files')
       DCLF FILE(IFSDIR)
     /* CREATE A FILE TO PUT LIST IN.  NOTE THAT THIS CANNOT BE +
        IN QTEMP, SINCE QSHELL CANNOT ACCESS QTEMP              */

       CHKOBJ OBJ(&FILELIB/IFSDIR) OBJTYPE(*FILE)
       MONMSG MSGID(CPF9801) EXEC(DO)
          CRTPF FILE(&FILELIB/IFSDIR) RCDLEN(1000)
       ENDDO

       CLRPFM FILE(&FILELIB/IFSDIR)

     /*  LIST ALL *.CSV INTO THE IFSDIR FILE */

       CHGVAR VAR(&CMD) VALUE('cd' *BCAT &IFSPATH *BCAT '&&' +
             *BCAT 'ls *.CSV >' *BCAT '/qsys.lib/' *CAT &FILELIB +
             *TCAT '.lib/ifsdir.file/ifsdir.mbr')

       STRQSH CMD(&CMD)
     /*  Read filenames */

LOOP:  RCVF
       MONMSG MSGID(CPF0864) EXEC(RETURN)

       /* &IFSDIR NOW CONTAINS THE FILENAME OF ONE CSV FILE IN THE +
             DIRECTORY */

       GOTO LOOP

ENDPGM

Another QShell method would be to execute a program of your choice with the FIND command. The following command will run a new copy of "mypgm" in library "mylib" for each file that it finds. It will pass the filename as a parameter to that program:

   STRQSH CMD('find /path/to/files -name *.csv -exec 
/qsys.lib/mylib.lib/mypgm.pgm {} \;')

Another method that does not involve QShell would be to write an ILE RPG or ILE C program that reads the filenames using the IFS APIs. This method would probably run faster, but is a bit more complex.

There are examples of this in my RPG IV IFS Tutorial, which you can read online at http://www.scottklement.com/rpg/ifs.html [1] .

Finally, there's a pre-written "DIR" program that you can download from the 'net that lets you list the files in a location of the IFS to *OUTFILE. I've never tried it, but it might work for you. You can find it here: http://www.ediconsulting.com/download.html [2]