A method is provided for recording a list of facilities available to a program executing on an information processing system. In such method a storage location and a length of data are defined for recording the list of facilities by a program being executed on the information processing system. An instruction is issued by the program for determining the available facilities and recording the list of available facilities in accordance with the defined storage location and data length. A processor executes the instruction to determine the available facilities and record the list of facilities in accordance with the defined storage location and defined data length. The recorded list of facilities can then be read by the first program.