Re: printer control character in print file records

Michael, 

The average COBOL program does not need to worry with the printer control
character on the iSeries. If you are writing to a print file it will handle
the printer control in the print file. WRITE....ADVANCING will work and give
the correct spacing on the report. When migrating from the mainframe you
have to deal with the 1 byte control character basically one of two ways. 

You can remove the one byte in front of the print record in the COBOL
program and the print file will handle all of the spacing for 
WRITE.....ADVANCING n lines. 

The other option is to use the TBLREFCHR(*YES) option on the print file
override statement. This will only work with DEVTYPE(*LINE/*AFPDSLINE)

OVRPRTF FILE(TESTPRT) DEVTYPE(*LINE) TBLREFCHR(*YES)

Hope this helps 
Jerry Thomas

-----Original Message-----
From: cobol400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:cobol400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Michael Rosinger
Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2006 6:38 AM
To: cobol400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [COBOL400-L] printer control character in print file records

This is related to my other post concerning print lines greater than 132...

In the mainframe world, there is a COBOL compiler option (ADV/NOADV) which 
deals with the placement of printer control characters for print lines. If 
ADV is specified, the compiler adds one byte to the record length to account

for the printer control character. ADV is only meaningful if you use 
WRITE...ADVANCING in the source code. If NOADV is in effect, the assumption 
is that the print line has already reserved a byte for the printer control 
character.

I've searched through what I can find are the available compiler options for

COBOL/ILE and I don't see anything comparable to ADV/NOADV.

How is the printer control character handled on the iSeries? Is this 
something the average iSeries COBOL program needs to be concerned with?