Line Sequential File Structure

Line sequential files are designed to enable you to read source or text files created with the system editor. As such, the structure is operating system dependent but typically contains variable length records with trailing spaces removed. In a line sequential file, each record in the file is separated from the next by a record delimiter.

For files created on UNIX systems the default record delimiter is the line feed character specified by the single byte x"0A". For files created on DOS or Windows the default record delimiter is the carriage return/line feed character specified by the byte pair x"0D0A". Files created using this COBOL system on UNIX can be read on DOS and Windows, and vice versa. If you set the INSERTNULL configuration option to OFF, you must make sure that any COMP or COMP-3 data does not contain bytes with a value of x"0A" (record delimiter), x"09" (tab) or x"0D" (carriage return).