# suppress INPUT delimiter **URL:** \ **Category:** Forum\ **Tags:** Adabas-Natural, Natural, Natural-on-Mainframes, Natural-on-Windows-Unix\ **Created:** [October 1, 2015, 6:25am UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/suppress-input-delimiter/184153 "2015-10-01T06:25:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Patrick\_Paulitz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Patrick\_Paulitz](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/u/Patrick_Paulitz)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2015, 6:25am UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/suppress-input-delimiter/184153/1 "2015-10-01T06:25:36Z")
I’m at home so don’t have the code snippet. I want to use INPUT to read a JCL card. The input is free-text. A comment, which sometimes includes a COMMA. English text. No matter what I try, I can’t suppress the delimiter to become nothing. I tried ID=’ ‘, which actually makes the delimiter a space, which makes it worse. ID=’’ won’t compile. It forces me to use a delimiter, and I don’t want one! Here is says making ID = blank will disable it, but it doesn’t work: [http://silk.nih.gov/dbtek/viewdoc?vdsn=VPOD.D3866649.C040729.PDF](http://silk.nih.gov/dbtek/viewdoc?vdsn=VPOD.D3866649.C040729.PDF) I tried IM=D and IM=F with various combinations, with no luck. It is obviously running in batch with JCL. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c68b51/32.png) [@Giles](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2015, 10:34am UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/suppress-input-delimiter/184153/2 "2015-10-01T10:34:00Z")
Have you tried setting the NATPARM to IM=F before you start Natural ? ---
**Author:** ![Jerome\_LeBlanc](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/techcommunity/user_avatar/techcommunity.softwareag.com/jerome_leblanc/32/111_2.png) [@Jerome\_LeBlanc](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/u/Jerome_LeBlanc)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2015, 12:36pm UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/suppress-input-delimiter/184153/3 "2015-10-01T12:36:26Z")
You could try ID=H’FF’ or some other character that would never show up in JCL. ---
**Author:** ![Patrick\_Paulitz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Patrick\_Paulitz](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/u/Patrick_Paulitz)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2015, 12:06am UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/suppress-input-delimiter/184153/4 "2015-10-02T00:06:12Z")
SET GLOBALS ID=H’FF’ won’t compile. It seems to want a printable keyboard character. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c68b51/32.png) [@Giles](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2015, 10:23am UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/suppress-input-delimiter/184153/5 "2015-10-02T10:23:50Z")
DEFINE DATA LOCAL 1 #A (A1) INIT \ 1 #PARM (A80) END-DEFINE FORMAT LS=81 SET GLOBALS ID=#A INPUT #PARM WRITE #PARM END It looks like you have to use a displayable character for ID= but you can improve your chances of it working by using a character that is _unlikely_ to have been used. You cannot use any hex character like FF otherwise you get NAT1115 Invalid alphabetic value for SET GLOBALS statement. ---
**Author:** ![Ralph\_Zbrog](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/techcommunity/user_avatar/techcommunity.softwareag.com/ralph_zbrog/32/78_2.png) [@Ralph\_Zbrog](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/u/Ralph_Zbrog)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2015, 5:24pm UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/suppress-input-delimiter/184153/6 "2015-10-02T17:24:23Z")
The hex assignment works under Natural 8.3 under Windows. I expect it to work under 8.x on the mainframe. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/techcommunity/original/3X/c/d/cd19967bb605d28a72d77eb83a1cae22f3df2eb8.svg) [@system](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2021, 3:34pm UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/suppress-input-delimiter/184153/7 "2021-04-02T15:34:19Z")