The JOB control card indicates the start of a new job and allows you to define several "execution options" for the job. The format of the JOB card is:

//jobname JOB options

'jobname' is the name you want to assign to the job. If you leave it blank, CJLI will default it to be your 'userid'.

Any job options must be comma-delimited with no leading or trailing spaces. For instance, you would find that

//MYJOB JOB ECHO=NO AFTER=19:00

is equivalent to "//MYJOB JOB ECHO=NO". The "AFTER=19:00" option will be treated as a comment (per item #6 in the preceding section, because it is preceded by a space) and ignored. Thus, the correct syntax for the above JOB card would be

//MYJOB JOB ECHO=NO,AFTER=19:00

The following options are available:

Echo=YES|NO

The default value (if the keyword is omitted) is YES and indicates that each command must be echoed to the job output before execution. The command is then prefixed with a "> ", and preceded by a blank line on the job output.

Reply-to=Sender|None|"u@n1 u@n2..."

The default value is "Sender" and indicates that the output of the job is to be sent to the sender of the job. "None" indicates that no output should be generated, and is used whenever the sender is a server which is not programmed to parse the output of a LISTSERV job. Also it makes sure that no loop can ever occur due to an error in a job. "u@n1 u@n2..." can be used whenever replies are to be sent to a different person/list of persons. These persons will first receive a separate message telling them that they are receiving the output of another person's job.

Reply-via=Mail|Message|MSG

The default value, "Mail", indicates that the job output is to be sent to its recipients in the form of a mail file. "Message" and "MSG" both indicate that interactive messages are desired. Note that an attempt to send interactive messages to a node which cannot handle them will result in LISTSERV sending a piece of mail containing the text of the various messages.

Stat=YES|NO

Determines whether or not server statistics ("Summary of resource utilization") for a given JOB are output in the command response to the invoker. The default is YES. A server-wide default may be set with the JOB_STAT_DEFAULT site configuration variable.

AFTER=date-spec|time-spec|"date-spec time-spec"

Tells LISTSERV when to run the job, i.e., run it after the time specified. There are three valid formats:

AFTER=date

AFTER=time

AFTER="date time"

The first two formats may also be quoted if desired. The third MUST be quoted since it contains a space. In case 1, the time is 00:00:00; in case 2, the date is today. The only date format that is guaranteed to work is yyyy-mm-dd (other formats may also work, without guarantees). The time is specified in a 24-hour format either with or without seconds: hh:mm or hh:mm:ss.

If the requested date is in the past, the job is executed immediately. Otherwise, it is placed on hold for execution at the exact specified time. If several jobs are submitted for the same execution time, the order in which they are executed is unpredictable. Generally, this would be a bad practice anyway since there is no guarantee that jobs arrive in the same order as you sent them. If on the other hand you schedule your jobs for one second after the previous one in the desired sequence, execution order will be respected, even if the execution of the first job causes the others to be simultaneously eligible for execution.

PW=password

Is the default password to use on commands where an explicit "PW=" keyword has not been specified. It makes it easier to write jobs performing several maintenance commands on the same distribution list, for example.

All other keywords, as well as positional parameters, are ignored. If an invalid value is specified for a valid keyword, the job is terminated by CJLI but the remaining jobs in the physical file are still executed.

If the JOB card is omitted, the 'outer' interface provides the following default JOB card:

//userid JOB Echo=Yes,Reply-to=Sender,Reply-via=Mail,Stat=Yes,PW=""