To evaluate the existence of an EBCDIC tab character, let's take the total number of instances in which any member of this list has ever in their career had occasion to code X'05'in a z/OS file for any functional purpose whatever. (For me, that's +0). Then divide that value by the cumulative years of experience among all the members of this list. (For me, that's a nontrivial number.)
If that quotient would suffice to persuade Virginia that yes, there is an EBCDIC tab character, then I will cave. Otherwise I stand by my assertion. . . JO.Skip Robinson Southern California Edison Company Electric Dragon Team Paddler SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager 626-302-7535 Office 323-715-0595 Mobile [email protected] From: Charles Mills <[email protected]> To: [email protected], Date: 01/10/2014 01:49 PM Subject: Re: Mainframe "culture" question - how display a tab character? Sent by: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> > the absence of tabs in the conventional EBCDIC character set It occurs to me that what may be meant is "the absence of control-character-based formatting in mainframe usage." On UNIX and Windows systems, fields are often delimited by tabs and records very often delimited by some combination of CR and/or LF. Page formatting is often done with embedded control characters. On the mainframe, fields are typically fixed length or of some indicated length, and records are fixed length or described by control words. Reports are formatted with blanks between fields, and the pagination controlled with characters that do not correspond to the nominal EBCDIC control characters. Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Skip Robinson Sent: Friday, January 10, 2014 12:05 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Mainframe "culture" question - how display a tab character? An intriguing question in view of the absence of tabs in the conventional EBCDIC character set. My emulator (Vista3270) is pretty rich, but even if I could somehow type a tab character into an MVS file, what would z/OS do with it? As to your question, I would prefer Parm2=FOO<tab>BAR because any single character representation would mislead the reader into typing *that* character. Like the old joke about not finding the "any" key. . . JO.Skip Robinson Southern California Edison Company Electric Dragon Team Paddler SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager 626-302-7535 Office 323-715-0595 Mobile [email protected] From: Charles Mills <[email protected]> To: [email protected], Date: 01/10/2014 11:48 AM Subject: Mainframe "culture" question - how display a tab character? Sent by: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> I have a started task that (among many other things) will display its own parameters, something like Parm1=WIDGET Parm2=FOOBAR At present all of the values it displays are printable characters. Due to an enhancement it is possible that one of the parameters will contain a horizontal tab character. A C programmer would expect the display to become Parm2=FOO\tBAR. MS Word would say FOO^tBAR. But those of you who are "real mainframers through and through," how would you expect a tab to be represented in a display? The value is going to be all printable characters 99% of the time so going to hex and character is probably a clumsy approach. Parm2=FOO<tab>BAR Parm2=FOO\tBAR Parm2=FOO^tBAR Or what? Thanks, Charles ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
