You use tape files to read and write records on a tape device. Files stored on tape devices can be divided into the following two categories:
You can create your own tape files using the Create Tape File (CRTTAPF) command. For further information on the CRTTAPF command, see the CL and APIs section of the Programming category in the iSeries 400 Information Center at this Web site -http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/pubs/html/as400/infocenter.htm. Alternately, you can use the default IBM-supplied tape file QTAPE. The tape file identifies the tape device to be used.
To use a file that is stored on a tape device, in your ILE COBOL program, you must:
You can only store a sequential file on a tape device because tape devices can only be accessed sequentially. Files stored on a tape device can have fixed or variable length records.
The file operations that are valid for a tape device are OPEN, CLOSE, READ, and WRITE.
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