Chapter 7. Indexing and loading 175
7.4.1  Understanding the input data
On every platform except z/OS, the FILEFORMAT parameter is used to describe the format of 
the input data. Before setting the FILEFORMAT parameter, it is important to understand the 
difference between the carriage control and the delimiter: 
/SM590000The delimiter separates the records. The most common delimiters are x'0A' and x'0D0A'. 
/SM590000The carriage control, if it exists, is the first byte of each record. The carriage control follows 
the delimiter, except at the beginning of the file, where the carriage control is the first byte. 
(Therefore, to search in a hexadecimal editor for the beginning of the next page of a file 
that uses x'0A' as the delimiter, search for x'0AF1' or x'0A31'.)
FILEFORMAT parameter
For AFP data, the FILEFORMAT parameter is not needed, unless the file is AFP in record 
format. For a description of record format, see “AFP Structured Fields” on page 176.
The FILEFORMAT parameter has the following values:
/SM590000record,n:
– For example: FILEFORMAT=record,100.
– Fixed-length line data.
– This type of file has no delimiter.
/SM590000stream:
– For example: fileformat = stream,(newline=X'0A') or (newline=X'0D0A').
– For variable record files that are created on UNIX platforms.
– Specify the delimiter in the FILEFORMAT parameter.
/SM590000record:
– For example: FILEFORMAT=record.
– Each record has a 2-byte prefix, which contains the length of the record. This length is 
exclusive, which means that it does not include the length of the 2-byte prefix itself. A 
download for z/OS adds this prefix when it downloads files.
– This type of file has no delimiter.
Carriage controls
It is important to set the ACIF parameters CC and CCTYPE correctly. Table 7-2 describes the 
ANSI carriage controls. The encoding columns show what you see if you look at the 
document in a hexadecimal editor.
Table 7-2   ANSI carriage controls
Carriage control Description Encodi ng in ASCII Encoding in EBCDIC
1 New page x '31' x'F1'
<space> Space one line x '20' x'40'
0 Space two lines x '30' x'F0'
- Space three lines x '2D' x'60'
+ Suppress space x '2B' x'8F'