Micro Focus Visual COBOL 2.3 for Eclipse (Windows) > General Reference > Run-time System Configuration > Run-time Tunables > Format of a Configuration File for Native COBOL

Format of a Configuration File for Native COBOL

The configuration file conforms to this format:

Each run-time tunable or UNIX environment variable appears on a new line.
Blank lines are ignored.
A comment line starts with a # character. However, as the configuration file is processed at run-time, we advise that you limit the number of comments, in order to keep to a minimum the time taken to process the configuration file.
The maximum number of characters permitted in a comment line is 80, including any new-line or carriage return characters that might be placed at the end of the line by some editors.
Each space in the definition can be replaced with tabs or more than one space. For example:
```
setenv dd_MYFILE /usr/mydir/myfile 
set cobconfig_error_report=TRUE
```

The format of each tunable is:

set configurable_name=value

The format for each UNIX environment variable is:

setenv configurable_name value

where:

configurable_name

The name of the run-time tunable or UNIX environment variable .

value

The value to be assigned to the run-time tunable or UNIX environment variable.

For a UNIX run-time tunable, value is validated according to the type and values allowed for that tunable, and the value of cobconfig_error_report.

Where value is numeric, a leading zero indicates that the value should be treated as octal (that is, base 8). For example, 07 (octal) is 7 (decimal), while 010 (octal) is 8 (decimal); however, 08 (octal) and 09 (octal) are invalid octal values. Hexadecimal values can also be set by using numeric values that begin with with 0x.