On a table file request which holds data into a hold file, how do I trim trailing speces from my character based variable and write out just the length equal to the last character?

I have a vriable in my Focus DB DESC/A25

in record 1, DESC equals "Web Focus" (9 chars)
in record 2, DESC equals "Red One" (7 chars)

If xxxxx and YYYYY represent othe data in my table request< I want the hold file to be:
xxxxxWebFocusYYYYY
xxxxxRed OneYYYYYY

Thanks

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kerry,

Brad,

Are you creating a hold file or a flat file? From what you have, I would assume you are essentially concatenating 3 fields together. If that is correct you could use the hard concatenation of "||" when joining your fields. Also you can use the format of A25V for a variable length field.

Does that help? If not, can you provide some more info?

a Flat file.....let me try your suggestion.

Eric

Did not work. In my examples, I was trying to indicate there are other data on the record.

I need a variable length record.

Brad

There are several formulas to measure the length of the field and the real actual size without trailing space.
And if the source field is an Av varchar the first internal 6 characters will give the actual size.
So once measured the size you can calculate how many you need for the last strings with YYYY

Thanks.

Do you have any quick examples?
My own search has not be productive.

Hi Brad,
Look at Variable Length Character Functions, specifically, LENV and TRIMV...

From the Help in DevStudio:

  
TABLE FILE MOVIES                                                 
PRINT 
COMPUTE TITLEV/A39V = TRIMV('T', TITLE, 39, ' ', 1, TITLEV);
        ALEN/I2 = LENV(TITLEV,ALEN);                                    
BY CATEGORY NOPRINT                                                    
WHERE CATEGORY EQ 'CHILDREN'
END                                                               
The output is:

TITLEV                                   ALEN
------                                   ----
SMURFS, THE                                11
SHAGGY DOG, THE                            15
SCOOBY-DOO-A DOG IN THE RUFF               28
ALICE IN WONDERLAND                        19
SESAME STREET-BEDTIME STORIES AND SONGS    39
ROMPER ROOM-ASK MISS MOLLY                 26
SLEEPING BEAUTY                            15
BAMBI                                       5

Say Hi to Mike...

Tom

Thanks Tom!

I'll give it a whirl....

Brad

Tom

This gives me the length of each individual field. So how do I write out a variable length file?

For example writing out a
movie code,title and Rel Date, here is what i want in the hold file:

Code Title RelDate
A23456SESAME STREET-BEDTIME STORIES AND SONGS19960115
B98765SMRURFS, THE19990705
C24678BAMBI19921225

Create a new field with define and concatenation the fields to one string

Suppose fields are A B C

Newf/A100=A||B||C;

You can add the formula TRIM to remove the trailing spaces.

Frank

I tried the hard concatenation into a new variable. In the hold file, it did not remove the training spaces.

I'll review my code again but it appears that if I display the variable, the spaces are removed.
If I hold the new compute variable in a file, it does not remove the trailing spaces of each of the individual variables.

I can't see why you're having trouble.

Perhaps we should use one of the sample data tables and provide you an example.

Here's an example of a new field that is a concatenation of three fields:

SET HOLDLIST=PRINTONLY

FILEDEF HOLDCAR1 DISK BASEAPP/HOLDCAR1.TXT

TABLE FILE CAR
PRINT
COMPUTE CONCAT1/A100 = COUNTRY || CAR || MODEL;
BY COUNTRY NOPRINT
ON TABLE HOLD AS HOLDCAR1 FORMAT ALPHA
END

Make sure you have HOLDLIST=PRINTONLY, otherwise you will get all the fields that are referred to in the COMPUTE as well as the COMPUTEd field.

Die you create the intermediate formatted fields conform The example Tom has made?
The formula with the LENV and TRIMV is what you need, and you need to do that on all 3 fields and see what length it gives per record.
Copy the exact fexcode once you did this and post that code so we can see you did not make a mistake.

(Looks like school ...)

You may want to check the available disk space on the server to be sure it is not full. I had this very same situation where the hard || concatenation just did not work. We then learned from our IT folks that the drive was full and had to be cleaned up. Once that was done the concatenation worked. I do not know for sure if this was directly related, but appears correlated. My guess is the disk may have been used for caching for performing the concatenation.

I have repro'd Brad's problem:

  
FILEDEF BRAD DISK C:\IBI\APPS\FOCALPOINT\BRAD.FTM 
-RUN
DEFINE FILE CAR
BRAD/A50V=TRIMV('T', COUNTRY || CAR || MODEL, 50, ' ', 1, BRAD);
END
TABLE FILE CAR
PRINT BRAD
ON TABLE HOLD AS BRAD FORMAT ALPHA
END

I created the file in an "apps" directory to be able to see it.
Results:
WF creates the file with the variable length field. It prefixes the field with its length in 6 bytes. HOWEVER, it keeps the full length of the field (50 bytes) and adds spaces.
So, in theory, this is a file with variable length records. In practice it is fixed length.

The only other way I could think of was using -WRITE:

  
FILEDEF BRAD DISK C:\IBI\APPS\FOCALPOINT\BRAD.FTM 
DEFINE FILE CAR
BRAD/A50V=TRIMV('T', COUNTRY || CAR || MODEL, 50, ' ', 1, BRAD);
END
TABLE FILE CAR
PRINT BRAD
ON TABLE HOLD AS HBRAD FORMAT ALPHA
END
-RUN
-SET &L=&LINES;
-REPEAT #W FOR &I FROM 1 TO &L;
-READ HBRAD,&V
-SET &VLEN=ARGLEN(&V.LENGTH,&V,'I2');
-SET &W=SUBSTR(&V.LENGTH, &V, 1, &VLEN, &VLEN, 'A&VLEN.EVAL');
-WRITE BRAD &W
-#W

If the length of the field is not desired use An instead of AnV.

As said in my first remark on this question the first 6 positions give you the actual length of the string
So what you can do I think is read that number and use it to create the substring without the trailing spaces.
Then you can concatenate the 3 components to one new string that mill have trailing spaces.
Final string should IMHO not be a varchar but a fixed char. Webfocus does not know varchar.