f can be specified as either a character or hexadecimal value. Specify either C'x' where x is a single EBCDIC character or X'hh' where hh represents a hexadecimal digit pair (00-FF).
The need for a fill byte can arise from two conditions:
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A portion or an entire p,l field specification is missing due to a short variable-length record.
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A JOIN UNPAIRED was used and the REFORMAT FIELDS specification requires a field from the file that is not being used to generate the current joined record.
The default FILL character is a blank. Binary zeros will be used instead of the FILL character for the first four bytes of a variable-length record requiring FILL processing. This indicates that a record was not present for the REFORMAT due to JOIN UNPAIRED.