Channel Codes are used in the Linedata printing to control the appearance of the printed data on the page.
It is used to control the spacing of the data on the page. Especially when generating Form-based output this type of line control is still very often used.
Today Channel codes are mostly used in legacy data and area utilized to group data, as it can work as a delimiter for variable sized groups. Transactions would be typically grouped this way.
Channel Codes are the very first byte in a line. Please note that on mainframes the dataset structure can determine such channel codes already (VBM blocked).
| Machine Code Control Characters | Machine Code Control Characters | ANSI Control Characters | |
| Action | Action after Printing | Action only (immediately) | Action before Printing |
| Print (no space) | 01 | – | 4E(+) |
| Space 1 line | 09 | 0B | 40( ) |
| Space 2 lines | 11 | 13 | 40(0) |
| Space 3 lines | 19 | 1B | 60(-) |
| Skip to Channel 1 | 89 | 8B | F1(1) |
| Skip to Channel 2 | 91 | 93 | F2(2) |
| Skip to Channel 3 | 99 | 9B | F3(3) |
| Skip to Channel 4 | A1 | A3 | F4(4) |
| Skip to Channel 5 | A9 | AB | F5(5) |
| Skip to Channel 6 | B1 | B3 | F6(6) |
| Skip to Channel 7 | B9 | BB | F7(7) |
| Skip to Channel 8 | C1 | C3 | F8(8) |
| Skip to Channel 9 | C9 | CB | F9(9) |
| Skip to Channel 10 | D1 | D3 | C1(A) |
| Skip to Channel 11 | D9 | DB | C2(B) |
| Skip to Channel 12 | E1 | E3 | C3(C) |