Export ASCII -x
Brian K. White
brian at aljex.com
Fri Nov 19 16:02:45 PST 2010
On 11/19/2010 5:06 PM, Nancy Palmquist wrote:
> Well I appreciate the testing you both did. But if you read the fp
> docs, it clearly indicates that it will provide a NEW LINE to an export
> with -x.
>
> So I should not have to put the r=\n or do anything special to get the
> file format I wanted.
I would see newlines as an unwanted injection into a -X export.
Fixed length data files do not have newlines. They do not have record
delimiters for the same reason they do not have field delimiters.
Records are extracted by counting bytes only, the same as the fields.
If you want fixed length fields, but for some reason also want an extra
byte or two in between every record, that is an unusual format and it's
correct that you should have to go out of your way to add those bytes
either by r= or by tacking on a field at the end.
If -X would automatically add a newline, then you'd need some way to
tell it not to do that, because otherwise it would be impossible to
output real fixed-length data. That would not be useful. Just as a
filepro key, data, and index files do not contain newlines or anything
else between records.
Probably adding r= with no argument would work to override that
backwards behavior if it existed but I consider it backwards to have to
do that when you already asked for fixed length via -X, that implies
r=<nothing> already by definition.
If the manual says newlines will be addded to -X by default, I think the
manual is simply wrong is all. It has other details either wrong or left
out or without sufficiently defining terms to make the explanation
meaningful. This would be no great shock. In this case, it's reasonable
for export to append a platform-dependant newline by default for other
formats besides -X. The help files in my installation do not say
anything about appending newlines to any format btw. A perfect example
of the missing details, since I think it does add them to at least some
formats by default.
--
bkw
> I posted my processing and it just did the EXPORT line, then posted one
> string to one field in the EXPORT.
>
> Then it did a WRITE. Very simple.
>
> I wanted it to properly add the NEW LINE it indicated was part of its
> output. But it added nothing.
>
> When I tried to help by adding it to the string, it added an additional
> 0d. So it looked like it was double spaced.
>
> If I was writing or reading a string of fixed length, lets say 100
> characters and I wanted the New Line to be appended as documented, that
> was my complaint. It took many experiments to get the right combination
> of CR LF to get a proper NEW line on each record. I did not want to
> mess with a field delimiter, since it was not required.
>
> But this was very interesting, don't you think?
>
> Nancy
>
> On 11/19/2010 1:38 PM, Bruce Easton wrote:
>> On 11/19/10 12:48 PM, Brian K. White wrote:
>>> On 11/19/2010 10:58 AM, Bruce Easton wrote:
>>>> OK - that's all fine and dandy, *BUT*, after re-reading what Nancy had
>>>> written below,
>>>> I now wonder if there is a difference between my fp 5.0.14 and whatever
>>>> version she is using or maybe it could be *nix vs. windows for the
>>>> results I got for putting r=\n after the -X (which didn't work in that
>>>> order for me whereas it seems to have worked for her on her line 330
>>>> shown below).
>>> I would have thought, and this agrees with what you just pointed out the
>>> manual says, that "-X", without any "r=", should result in NO record
>>> delimiter, no LF or CR, just like a filepro key file.
>>>
>> Yes - it definitely does. But in the part of my reply (to myself) that
>> you cut above, I had tested:
>>
>> r=\n -X
>>
>> verses
>>
>> -X r=\n
>>
>> where, in the latter case, for me on Linux fp5.0.14, the r=\n was
>> ignored, whereas Nancy's code shown with that same order worked for her.
>>
>> Bruce
>>
>>
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