Density functional theory is applied to hard site chains between hard walls. The wall separation is varied and the normal pressures, surface excesses, and surface tensions are recorded. At low bulk density, a density depletion near the wall dominates the thermodynamic behavior. At high bulk density, the thermodynamic properties develop a damped oscillatory behavior with a period of approximately one site diameter and a range of roughly six site diameters. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.