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.
The default value is 0.