Trailing Blanks in Line Sequential Files

Visual COBOL always removes trailing blanks from line sequential records before writing the record. RM/COBOL removes trailing blanks from such records only if the FD entry contains 01 level records of different sizes. This will not cause you any problems when you run your converted RM/COBOL programs in Visual COBOL. However, you may receive errors at run time if any REWRITE operations on line sequential files change the length of the records.

Change the file organization to sequential, or move an alternative padding character (for example, LOW-VALUES) to the end of the record before it is written. This ensures that full-length records are written.

You also need to ensure that the T run-time switch is not set, as this might also change the size of the record. See Run-time Switches in the product Help.