HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
Column 18 Forced Character The discussion of column 7 entries covers the subject of forced characters in detail. You use your column 18 entry only when you are using forced control fields to sort your records or when you are using forced data fields. In forcing a control field, the entry in column 18 either replaces the character you specified in column 17 or adds a character to the work record. If you are using the entry to force a data field, the character in column 18 will be added in the next available data field position of the work record.
NOTE You can only use forced characters with 1-character fields, and your input records are not changed when you use forced characters.