Patent ID: 8677077

Claim:
A computer program product for executing an instruction, said computer program product comprising: a non-transitory computer readable storage medium readable by a processor and storing instructions for execution by the processor for performing a method comprising: executing, by a processor, a test protection machine instruction, the test protection machine instruction configured to provide information about storage to be used by a program, the information including one or more indications regarding protection of the storage, and the test protection machine instruction comprising an opcode field specifying the test protection machine instruction and a first operand, the executing comprising: testing a location of storage designated by the first operand to obtain one or more indications regarding protection of the location of storage, wherein the testing determines whether access is to be permitted by a separate instruction but does not perform the access, and wherein the location of storage has a segment table entry associated therewith comprising a first storage key, and wherein the testing comprises: using a storage key to determine whether access to the location of storage is permitted, wherein the storage key is a second storage key associated with the location of storage or the first storage key in the segment table entry; and providing a condition code based on the testing, wherein the condition code indicates that access is permitted although translation tables are not updated to remove a copy-on-write protection.