A CNTL statement must appear before the DD statement that refers to it. The CNTL and its referencing DD statement must be in the same job step or in the same cataloged or in-stream procedure step. A CNTL statement can be in a procedure and the referencing DD statement can be in the calling job step, but not vice versa.

You can define CNTL/ENDCNTL groups at the job level and the step level. A job-level CNTL/ENDCNTL group appears before the first EXEC statement of the job. A step-level CNTL/ENDCNTL group appears within the same job step or procedure step. If you code multiple step-level CNTL/ENDCNTL groups, the label on each CNTL statement must be unique within that step. Likewise, multiple job-level CNTL statements must also have unique labels. You can, however, use the same name on a step-level CNTL label and a job-level CNTL label. In this case, the step-level CNTL group overrides the job-level CNTL group.