IBM S544-5285-01 manual Working with file transfer and AIX, Variable-length files, Ebcdic, Ascii

Working with file transfer and AIX

(If you work outside the AIX environment, you may skip this section, information about working with file transfer does not pertain to the OS/ VM, or VSE environments.)

ACIF needs to know two things about a file in order to print it:

Ÿ How long is each print record

Ÿ What kind of carriage control is used

As simple as this sounds, it is the source of most of the difficulty printing with ACIF in an AIX environment.

ACIF processes print records. A record is a sequence of contiguous c usually representing a printed line or a MO:DCA (AFPDS) 2.struEacturedh field record has a defined boundary or length. Some files contain information record that describes the record's length; these are called variable Other files require an external definition of length; these are called

ŸVariable-length files

Variable-length files may use

a length prefix, which means they

prefix

that identifies

the

length of the

record in

the

file.

contains

a

field that

gives

the length of the record. If the

length,

that length must be a

prefix for each record and it mu

binary

number that includes the length of

the 2-byte length pref

FILEFORMAT

=RECORD control statement to identify files with length

prefixes.

Variable-length

files

may

use

a

separator

or

delimiter

to

indicat

a record, instead of using a length prefix. All of the bytes

including, the delimiter are considered to be part of the reco

delimiter 'is0A '.X

If

the

file

uses EBCDIC encoding, the newline ch

is 'X25 '.

Use FILEFORMATthe

=STREAM

control

statement

to

designate

files that

use

newlines

to

indicate

record

boundaries.

3

ACIF reads the first six bytes and tests for,toall ASCII charact

determine if a file is encoded in ASCII or EBCDIC. If no non-ASC

characters are found, ACIF assumes the file uses the ASCII newl

character,'0A 'X.

Otherwise,

ACIF

assumes the file uses the EBCDIC

newline

character,'25 '.X Because

an

input

file

can misguide

ACIF, eith

intentionally or by accident, a set of rules has been establishe

determine how ACIF will interpret how a file

will

be processed.

following

combinations

are

possible:

Data

Type

Newline

Character

All

EBCDIC

EBCDIC X '25 '

All

EBCDIC

ASCII 'X0A ' (Note 1)

All

ASCII

EBCDIC 'X25 ' (Note 1)

All

ASCII

ASCII'0AX'

2	Structured fields are similar to print commands.
3	code points from'00 ' Xto'7FX'

180 ACIF User’s Guide