T run-time switch

Enables insertion of tab characters in all line sequential files.
Restriction: These switches are supported for native COBOL only.

Properties:

Default: Off
Type: File handling

Comments:

This switch is especially useful if the format of your files is incompatible with this COBOL system.

On output to disk, multiple spaces before a tab stop position are written as one tab character. The T switch does not affect any trailing spaces as these are not part of the line sequential record, and they are removed on output. Tab positions are every 8 character positions (for example, 9, 17, 25) and cannot be changed.

On input, tab characters are always expanded to spaces to the next position, regardless of the setting of the T switch.

With this switch set to off, all spaces in a line sequential file are written to disk as space characters.