IBM Machine Code Printer Control Characters
Open-knowledge reference entry
Early mainframe printers were usually line printers. Line printers provide a limited set of commands to control how the paper is advanced when print lines are printed. The application writing reports, list, etc. to be printed has to include those commands in the print data. These single character print commands are called printer control characters.
Introduction into Print Control Characters
Printer control characters and Carriage control characters are IBM mainframe terms that denote the special meaning which the first character on a line of printable text may have. The first character of each line of text is interpreted as a control character or printer command instead of a character to be printed if a corresponding attribute is set for the print data set (data set is mainframe speak for what is known as a file on other operating systems).
How Printer Control Characters work
While mostly replaced by an electronic versions later on, line printers initially used a loop of punched paper tape to control the movement of the paper while printing. This tape is called a carriage control tape and is mounted on the printer. The looped carriage tape moves synchronously with the stream of fanfold paper.
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