Cory,

After issuing the indicated file equation and 'listf' the resulting message
file was as follows:

FILENAME  CODE  ------------LOGICAL RECORD-----------  ----SPACE----
                  SIZE  TYP        EOF      LIMIT R/B  SECTORS #X MX

IT                 80B  VACM         0      11985 255      432  1 32

The 'rec' variable created by the 'input' command, ends up being 80 bytes
long.  So when you echo the 80 byte
'rec' variable into a 79 byte record file it will 'spill over' and thus the
extra blank.  You can either 'RTRIM' the 'rec'
variable before writing it out or you can build the file to be larger than
79 characters.

Regards
Paul Christidis