Add "EXCEPTION" parameter to CHECK INDEX to discontinue processing after N disrepancies

Sometimes when you run CHECK INDEX you encounter a huge number of discrepancies so much so that the utility keeps running and running and producing an excessive amount of output -messages regarding the details of the discrepancies.

In some cases you really just want to determine whether there are any discrepancies at all, and then take further action based on your findings.

The continued execution of the utility in the aforementioned scenario can be frustrating sometimes.  If you discover there are discrepancies, and they number in the tens of millions, you don't want to have to wait for the utility to complete, and you don't want to chew up your JES spool space with this unnecessary output.  The action you might take is to cancel the job, which is only viable if you're sitting there watching the job.

The CHECK DATA utility already has an "EXCEPTION" parameter, which defaults to 0.  If we had such a parameter for CHECK INDEX, then one can code this (in certain cases) to value of 1, so that the utility would stop executing as soon as it found a single discrepancy.

In some cases, if you have CHECK INDEX coded as part of your normal health checking job flow you would want to be notified (i.e. through job/step return codes and automation) and only THEN step in and review and take action.   Otherwise, you have wasted CPU, wasted spool, wasted job output management storage for millions of discrepancies and you cannot make any use of this output.  If you were simply informed that there was a SINGLE discrepancy, that is useful enough for your task.

The only workaround I could see would be to do some creative JCL coding, but this is clumsy and as I'm suggesting, could very easily be handled by the software.

Thank you.