The table reference character is a numeric character that corresponds to the order in which you specified the character arrangement table names with the CHARS keyword. The system uses the table reference character for selection of a character arrangement table during printing.

A numeric table reference character (such as 0) selects the font to which the character corresponds. The characters' number values represent the order in which you specified the font names with the CHARS parameter. In addition to using table reference characters that correspond to font names specified in the CHARS parameter, you can code table reference characters that correspond to font names specified in the PAGEDEF control structure. With CHARS, valid table reference characters vary and range between 0 and 3. With PAGEDEF, they range between 0 and 126. The system treats table reference characters with values greater than the limit as 0 (zero).

Indicate the presence of table reference characters by coding OPTCD=J in the DCB macro, in the DD statement, or in the dynamic allocation call.

The system processes table reference characters on printers such as the IBM 3800 and IBM 3900 that support the CHARS and PAGEDEF parameters on the DD statement. If the device is a printer that does not support CHARS or PAGEDEF, the system discards the table reference character. This is true both for printers that are allocated directly to the job step and for SYSOUT data sets. This makes it unnecessary for your program to know whether the printer supports table reference characters.

If the immediate destination of the data set for which OPTCD=J was specified is DASD, the system treats the table reference characters as part of the data. The system also records the OPTCD value in the data set label. If the immediate destination is tape, the system does not record the OPTCD value in the data set label.