Import question

[Fairlight]

Y'all catch dis heeyah?  Don Coleman been jivin' 'bout like:
> I have an import process that imports a text file via Windows Task scheduler
> every 4 minutes.  Following is the beginning of one line copied from that
> text file which will not import.
> 
> 06914995:02:47:42 PM: :SMC:	(copied/pasted from the imported text file)
> 
> This is a colon field-delimited file.  My filePro import process stops
> reading data after the apparent blank space after the "PM:".  My hex editor
> says this field contains a hex 00 NUL and each variable after this field
> shows as a blank value.  The import process then continues as expected
> beginning with the next record (NL).  This problem arose after a software
> update to the alien application creating the file.  They have been unable to
> explain or correct the issue on their end so it looks like I have to program
> around it.  This happens in a limited number of random records (1-10/day)
> out of up to 25,000 records in the file.  Any suggestions on how to program
> around this so the file does not have to be manually edited.  In order to
> fix presently you must open the file with a text editor and delete that
> "invisible" character.  It then imports correctly.  

You just want to strip out every NULL in every line?


#!/usr/bin/perl
foreach my $line (<>) {
     $line =~ s/\000//g;
     print(${line});
}
exit;


Save that program, mode it 755, pipe your data through it or call it with
the data file path as an argument (either works), and redirect the output
to a new file.

I'd have used sed, but I can't honestly remember how to represent a null to
sed off the top of my head.  Same concept, I just don't use sed much since
I'm in perl so often.  I have $0.01 that says Bob Stockler gives you an
awk solution that does the same thing, and JPR can readily produce the sed
version.  :)

mark->