Call SOR$SPEC_FILE to pass a specification file name or a buffer with specification text to a sort or merge operation. Through the use of a specification file, you can selectively omit or include particular records from the sort or merge operation and specify the reformatting of the output records. (See the Sort Utility in the OpenVMS User's Manual for a complete description of specification files.) If you call the SOR$SPEC_FILE routine, you must do so before you call any other routines. You must pass either the spec_file or spec_buffer argument, but not both. Some of the return condition values are used with different severities, depending on whether SORT/MERGE can recover. Thus, if you want to check for a specific status, you should use LIB$MATCH_COND.