The value of this variable affects how carriage-control characters are treated
when found in LINE SEQUENTIAL data files.
RM/COBOL version 2 handles carriage-control characters in a line sequential
file differently on different systems. By default, both ACUCOBOL-GT and RM/COBOL-85 remove carriage-control characters from input records for line
sequential files. This is the ANSI standard. RM/COBOL version 2, however,
does not remove form-feed characters on MS-DOS machines and does not remove
form-feed or carriage-return characters on UNIX systems. Some existing RM/COBOL
version 2 programs depend on this behavior.
You can retain any or all of these characters in the input record by setting
CARRIAGE_CONTROL_FILTER to a value as follows:
1 form-feed characters are retained
2 carriage-return characters are retained
4 line-feed characters are retained
You can specify two or three characters to be retained by adding the
appropriate values together. For example, a value of 6 retains carriage-returns and
line-feeds (2 plus 4). Setting the variable to "0" causes the default action of
removing all three characters.
Note that on VMS systems, carriage-control information is not placed directly
into data records and is instead maintained separately. For this reason, the
CARRIAGE_CONTROL_FILTER setting has no effect on VMS systems and should not be
considered portable to those machines.
The default value is "0".