Other considerations

Conventional file transfer programs cannot correctly handle the combination of variable-length files, which contain bytes that cannot be translated from their original representation to ASCII, and might also contain machine control characters, mixed line data and structured fields, or special code points that have no standard mapping. Your best solution is to either NFS-mount the file, or write a small filter program on the host system that appends the 2-byte record length to each record and transfer the file binary.

Generally, NFS-mounted files are not translated. However, NFS includes a 2-byte binary record length as a prefix for variable-length records. (Check your NFS implementation; you might have to use special parameters.)

Note: Some NFS systems do not supply the binary record length for fixed-length files.

ACIF treats a file that contains only structured fields (MO:DCA-P) as a special case. You can always transfer such a file as binary with no special record separator, and ACIF can always read it because structured fields are self-defining, containing their own length; ACIF handles print files and print resources (form definitions, fonts, page segments, overlays, and other resources) in the same way.

Parent topic: Understanding common methods of transferring files into AIX or Windows from other systems