Export Field Seperator

[Brian K. White]

If you intend to import into plain old excel, then why aren't you just 
using export word?

export word out = "filename.csv"

that all by itself produces

"aaa","bbb","ccc"

If you have quotes in the data, you can make a gosub that you run on the 
dangerous fields to detect and edit the field on the fly, the edit is 
simply to double any quotes. unfortunately the simplest code for that 
requires reading the old variable one character at a time, and building 
a new one. But, you can put it all in a gosub and only call that gosub 
on the few fields that are in danger of having quotes in them, and then 
on top of that, that gosub can start with a single line to detect if 
there are any quotes at all and skip all the work in most cases. So most 
of the time the routine will not even be called so it shouldn't slow 
down most exports.


then: n=6 ; gosub esq ; out(6)=n
...
then: n=20 ; gosub esq ; out(20)=n
...
then: end

esq: ' escape quotes in N
if: not n co chr("92") ' do nothing unless needed
then: return
if:
then: p(8,.0) = "1" ; ic(1) = "" ; o = ""
then: l(8,.0) = len(n{"")
esql: if:
then: ic = mid(n,p,"1") ; oc = ic
if: asc(ic) eq "92"
then: oc = ic{ic
if:
then: o = o & oc
if: p lt l
then: p = p + "1" ; goto esql
if: ' return the edited N
then: n = o ; return


n is the input and then also overwritten for the output at the end

p is a postion marker within the input n, it walks through from 
character 1 to the end of n

ic is a single input character, it has one character from n at a time

oc is a single output character or multi-character replacement

o is the temp new output as it's being built up during the routine


Everything else besides double-quotes, not only commas but even 
linefeeds and carriage returns should be fine inside the fields.

-- 
bkw



On 8/13/2012 11:28 AM, Scott Walker wrote:
> Brian,
>
> Thanks.  You know what.  I just tested excel and it does not let you specify
> (2) characters as a field separator so I guess I'm stuck using one.
>
> Regards,
>
> Scott
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: filepro-list-
>> bounces+scottwalker=ramsystemscorp.com at lists.celestial.com
>> [mailto:filepro-list-
>> bounces+scottwalker=ramsystemscorp.com at lists.celestial.com] On Behalf Of
>> Brian K. White
>> Sent: Monday, August 13, 2012 11:20 AM
>> To: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
>> Subject: Re: Export Field Seperator
>>
>> This should work:
>>
>> export ascii alias = name r=\n o=| c=|
>>
>> But I haven't tried it.
>>
>> --
>> bkw
>>
>>
>> On 8/12/2012 6:35 PM, Scott Walker wrote:
>>> I'm doing an export ascii.
>>>
>>> Is there an easy way to use two characters as the field separator.
>>>
>>> Specifically I'm trying to use two pipe symbols as the field separator.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Scott
>>>
>>>
>>> Scott Walker
>>> RAM Systems Corp
>>> (704) 896-6549
>>> Scott.Walker at RAMSystemsCorp.com
>>>
>>> www.RAMSystemsCorp.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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