TAB DELIMITED FILe

You will have to do that programmatically.  There is no automated way in COBOL.

Here is the general idea (all data items are USAGE DISPLAY):

    MOVE SPACES TO LINE-SEQ-RECORD.
    STRING   DATA-ITEM-1     DELIMITED SIZE
             X"09"           DELIMITED SIZE
             DATA-ITEM-2     DELIMITED SIZE
             X"09"           DELIMITED SIZE
             DATA-ITEM-3     DELIMITED SIZE
             X"09"           DELIMITED SIZE
             DATA-ITEM-4     DELIMITED SIZE
             X"09"           DELIMITED SIZE
             DATA-ITEM-5     DELIMITED SIZE
        INTO LINE-SEQ-RECORD.
    WRITE LINE-SEQ-RECORD.

Be sure to use a device-name on the ASSIGN clause that removes trailing spaces from the record on WRITE operations.  See Chapter 8 (File Types and Structures section) in the RM/COBOL Users Guide for additional information.

new problem.  I took the last suggeston using the STRING Command and was able to generate a file.  my problem now is that records written to the file have random leading spaces in them. I tried manually shifting the data character by character and debug mode shows the data starts in position one of the output record.  But only the first record starts in position 1.  The second one is shifted 81 characters to the right and then the next 13 are shifted 18 characters.  i am at a loss on what to do next.

Please post your test program.  

Adding a file to a post on this forum is not obvious.  First, click on the 'Use rich formatting' and type in your reply.  Then click the 'Options' tab.  There you will find a link that allows you to add a file.

Or, you can post you response, then click on the pencil icon to edit your post, and you will have the 'Options' tab.