Text streams

Text streams contain printable characters and, depending on the type of file, control characters. Text streams are organized into lines. Each line ends with a control character, usually a new-line. The last record in a text file may or may not end with a control character, depending on what kind of file you are using. Text files recognize the following control characters:

\a

Alarm.

\b

Backspace.

\f

Form feed.

\n

New-line.

\r

Carriage return.

\t

Horizontal tab character.

\v

Vertical tab character.

\x0E

DBCS shift-out character. Indicates the beginning of a DBCS string, if MB_CUR_MAX>1 in the definition of the locale that is in effect. For more information about __MBCURMAX, see z/OS XL C Support for the double-byte character set.

\x0F

DBCS shift-in character. Indicates the end of a DBCS string, if MB_CUR_MAX>1 in the definition of the locale that is in effect. For more information about __MBCURMAX, see z/OS XL C Support for the double-byte character set.

Control characters behave differently in terminal files (see Performing terminal I/O operations) and ASA files (see Using ASA text files).