Hays McLean wrote: > > >> Hays, Real Computers use '05'X for a tab character (EBCDIC vs. ASCII). > We could tell from the question that the first guy used ASCII so we all > told him to use '09'x (or byte(9)). CMS is close enough to the One True > Operating System that it uses '05'X. > Tim Berryhill - Contract Programmer and General Wizard > TWB2@PGE.COM << > > '05'X gives me dots, too: > > data; name='Joe'; address='100 Main St.'; > tab='05'X; put name tab address; > run; > > Output: > Joe . 100 Main St. > > Guess I'm destined not to use tabs. > > --Hays McLean

Hays,

It's probably just that CMS (& MVS) don't generally support the use of tabs. Instead, it treats them as 'non-display characters' which will be represented by a dot. If you transferred the output file to an ascii system, for example, you would see that the dots are, in fact, tab characters and would be traeted as such by most word processors etc.

Regards

Bruce

P.S. Tim, this doesn't mean I think DOS is better than MVS / CMS :-)