RM/COBOL 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.
ACUCOBOL-GT can optionally retain any or all of these characters in the input record. If the configuration variable CARRIAGE_CONTROL_FILTER is set to 1, then form-feed characters will be retained in the input record. If it is set to 2, then carriage-return characters will be retained. If it is set to 4, then line feeds will be retained. You may specify combinations of characters to retain by adding their corresponding values together. For example, specifying 6 causes carriage-returns and line feeds (2 plus 4) to be retained. Setting the variable to zero 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.