errors within an exported .slk file

[Brian K. White]

On 7/20/2014 4:31 PM, Mike Fedkiw wrote:
> Actually a CSV file is where I started with a different export but I just couldn't get it to work because of asterisks, commas and semicolons within the field I wanted to export. That's why I went to the SLK file, it didn't care about any of that. I think it's kinda ridiculous that it can be so difficult to export stuff like I'm trying to. It's like use slk for this one but use something different for another and I haven't really done much exporting anyway. Can't wait until I need to find a third way to export something, this just sucks.

Welcome to computers? The problems involved with data handling are just 
part of the job.

I have not had any problem exporting data from fp using csv, including 
all of those characters and even newlines embedded within a single field 
in a single record. Whatever field and record delimiters you choose, 
those are the only characters you have to scan and delete or encode on 
export. I usually do it with a little gosub, like

n = 4 ; gosub clean ; out(4) = n

Any other problems lie in the *receiver*. Some apps fail to import 
perfectly valid data. If the thing doing the importing chokes on 
asterisks, then I guess you have to add asterisk encoding into your 
gosub clean. That's particular to that app you're importing to though. 
It would be wrong for anything else. In that case instead of gosub clean 
it should probably be called gosub make-app-foo-happy, except we can't 
have labels that long ;)

example:
---top---
...
   If: 'notes
Then: n=19{l{20{l{21{l{22{l{23{l{24{"" ; gosub clean ; csv(19)=n
...
clean  If:
      Then: n = xlate(n,chr("34"){chr("13"),"'") ; return
...
If:
Then: end
@once If:
     Then: l(1,*,g)=chr("10")
...
---bottom---

So L is defined globally as a newline character in @once, happens just 
once, first, before any record processing.

Then during record processing, several fields and newlines are catted 
together into N

Then gosub clean only does two things in this case, it changes any " 
into ' and it deletes any carriage returns, and the result is put back 
into N

Then the csv output gets that all into a single field in a single record.

In this case the receiver was Palm Desktop and MS Outlook.
In either app, when you pull up a contact that was exported this way, 
one of the things in the address book entry was a notes field, which was 
really an entire small text file with line-breaks within it. The data 
was modified so any double-quotes were changed to single quotes, which 
is not ideal, but no other characters had to be changed at all.

A more proper answer is probably to double any double-quotes.
I think that's what Excel and LibreOffice etc expect these days and so 
it's probably what most other apps expect as well.

So, instead of the above very crude gosub, it gets a little more 
difficult, but only one time, then you can copy it after you have one 
working example. The gosub needs to loop through the field one char at a 
time unfortunately and build a new field in this case, because there is 
no fancy sed-like function in fp. If you want to to change any one 
character to any one other char, or delete any character, no problem, 
xlate() is simple. But if you want to replace any single character with 
a multiple character encoding, like changing $ to \$, for that you need 
to do it yourself with a loop. But, it's not that bad once you have one 
working example. And once it's in a gosub, it's no harder to use than a 
function. In this case, here's an example that changes " to "".

legend:
di = data in (do not declare a size for di)
do = data out
dp = data position
dl = data length
ic = input character
oc = output character (do not declare a size for oc)
q = a double-quote character
n = i/o ( the only variable used to talk to the gosub )


clean
Then: dp = "1" ; do = "" ; q = chr("34")
Then: di = n{"" ; dl = len(di)
nxtchr
Then: ic = mid(di,dp,"1") ; oc = ic
   If: ic eq q
Then: oc = q { q
Then: do = do & oc
   If: dp lt dl
Then: dp = dp + "1" ; goto nxtchr
Then: n = do ; return



Use it the same way as before:

Then: n = 4 ; gosub clean ; out(4) = n

All this one does is, any " are turned into ""
That should handle quotes within fields in csv for most spreadsheet 
apps. The receiving app converts it back to a single "

You would put any other tests & transformations you want just before the 
line "do = do & oc"

I would use this with "export word" which is csv.
just: export word csv=(fn)
no f=, r=\n etc..

If the receiving app is choking on asterisks or semicolons, then write 
an asterisk and a semicolon into a data field in that app, and export to 
csv from that app, and see what the app wrote for that field. Whatever 
it did, make gosub clean do the same thing, and the app should hopefully 
import the same kind of data it itself exports.

-- 
bkw