Rational Developer for System z
Enterprise COBOL for z/OS, Version 4.1, Programming Guide


Processing line-sequential files

Line-sequential files reside in the hierarchical file system (HFS) and contain only printable characters and certain control characters as data. Each record ends with an EBCDIC newline character (X'15'), which is not included in the record length.

Because these are sequential files, records are placed one after another according to entry order. Your program can process these files only sequentially, retrieving (with the READ statement) records in the same order as they are in the file. A new record is placed after the preceding record.

To process line-sequential files in your program, use COBOL language statements that:

After you have created a record, you cannot change its length or its position in the file, and you cannot delete it.

related references  
Allowable control characters


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