Because it's a printable dataset.

-- 
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3
עַם יִשְׂרָאֵל חַי
נֵ֣צַח יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל לֹ֥א יְשַׁקֵּ֖ר




________________________________________
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> on behalf of 
Joseph Reichman <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, January 1, 2026 9:49 PM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Question on RECFM=VBA


External Message: Use Caution


I just have one question then

Since most snap DCB goes to DASD why have RECFM=VBA     VB would be good
enough I thought SVC 51 aka snap/sdump uses these to insert blank lines

Obviously ad you said that’s not the case it just does a write

Thanks




On Thu, Jan 1, 2026 at 9:45 PM Charles Mills <[email protected]> wrote:

> If I am understanding your question correctly, it doesn't work that way.
> ISPF does not "simulate a printer." If you write a record with an ANSI
> control character of '0' you will not see a blank line in ISPF the way you
> would on a physical printer.
>
> I think if you look at the heading of your ISPF browse you will see that
> you are by default viewing columns 2 through whatever your screen width is.
> If you do a LEFT (usually PF 10) you will see the '0' in column one.
>
> I "get" what you want. A "simulated printer mode" with blank lines and
> "page ejects" would occasionally be useful.
>
> Charles
>
> On Thu, 1 Jan 2026 21:07:31 -0500, Joseph Reichman <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> >I am looking at the DCB parameters for my snap DCB
> >
> >I’m trying to write records to the file before snap
> >
> >So first comes the BDW for 4 bytes then comes next 4 bytes RDW
> >
> >The 9 th byte would then be the control character
> >
> >So…….
> >
> >If I move a 0 to BDW+8 it should space 2 lines before writting the record
> going to ISPF browse doesn’t seem that way as the record appears right
> after ******** TOP OF DATA *****
>
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