The format specifications related to the file described in chapter Format Specifications Related to a File and Other File Options DEC (decimal representation), DATE (date representation), TIME (time representation), ASCII or EBCDIC (code conversion), etc., are also allowed in DATAEXTRACT statements. These options may be specified in any order.
For output files, the option APPEND which determines that an existing file with the same name will not be overwritten. The extracted data is written successively to the end of this file instead.
The options COMPRESS, SEPARATOR '<character>' and/ or DELIMITER '<character>' can be used to produce a compressed output file. The data is written without leading or closing blanks, with each column value separated by a separating character. The default SEPARATOR is the comma. Character strings (not numbers) are enclosed in double quotation marks when the DELIMITER option does not specify something else.
If the output file becomes so large that it must be distributed over several magnetic tapes, then the option COUNT must be used. The number of records that fit on the tape must be specified after COUNT. In this case, LOAD writes a line with the sequence number of the partial file to each tape. If the specified number of lines was written, the user is requested to mount the next tape.