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CARRIAGE_CONTROL_FILTER

The value of this variable affects how carriage control characters will be treated when found in LINE SEQUENTIAL data files.

RM/COBOL version 2 handles carriage control characters in a line sequential file differently on different systems. By default, both ACUCOBOL-GT and RM/COBOL-85 remove carriage control characters from input records for line sequential files. This is the ANSI standard. RM/COBOL version 2, however, does not remove form-feed characters on MS-DOS machines and does not remove form-feed or carriage return characters on UNIX systems. Some existing RM/COBOL version 2 programs depend on this behavior.

You can retain any or all of these characters in the input record by setting CARRIAGE_CONTROL_FILTER to a value as follows:

1
form-feed characters are retained
2
carriage return characters are retained
4
line-feed characters are retained

You can specify two or three characters to be retained by adding the appropriate values together. For example, a value of "6" retains carriage returns and line feeds (2 plus 4). Setting the variable to "0" causes the default action of removing all three characters.


Note that on VMS systems, carriage control information is not placed directly into data records and is instead maintained separately. For this reason, the CARRIAGE_CONTROL_FILTER setting has no effect on VMS systems and should not be considered portable to those machines.
The default value is "0".