It would appear that the field called KIND in a check file hold ouput file has a format of U4 (U4B) .... I THINK this field is used to denote the type of field. EG DEFINEd field is 07000000 and DEFINEd field with MISING ON is 07080000. Trouble is I cannot seem to reference this field in an IF/DEFINE to flag DEFINEd fields. anyone know a way round this ? Any hints/tips would be appreciated !

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

twiddows55,

Found this on the internal site, might help depending on what you actually are trying to do.

DEFINE FILE SYSCOLUM
DEF_TYPE/A15 = DECODE DEFINE('C' 'Computes' 'F' 'Filters' 'Y' 'Defines'
ELSE 'Fields ');
END
TABLE FILE SYSCOLUM
PRINT NAME AS '' ALIAS AS '' USAGE AS ''
WHERE TBNAME EQ 'EMPLOYEE'
BY DEF_TYPE ROWS
Fields OVER
Defines OVER
Computes OVER
Filters
END

Thanks very much I can work around this now!
There is a field called DEFINE and DEFTEXT in the table which gives me a flag creator and something to work with. If anyone out there does know anything about the 'KIND' field I would still appreciate the knowledge on how to read it but this will enable me to achieve what I need to do. TVM

Twiddows

U format is unformatted hexadecimal. So if your field looks like 07080000, for screening you can use:

DEFINE FILE HOLD
IG /A1 = HEXBYT(7, 'A1');
UG /A1 = HEXBYT(8, 'A1');
AH/A1 = IF KIND CONTAINS IG THEN 'Y' ELSE 'N';
AY/A1 = IF KIND CONTAINS UG THEN 'Y' ELSE 'N';
END
TABLE FILE HOLD
PRINT KIND IG UG AH AY
-*WHERE KIND CONTAINS IG 
-*   OR KIND CONTAINS UG
END

To see exactly what happens, try

DEFINE FILE HOLD
NEWKIND/U8 = KIND;
END
TABLE FILE HOLD
PRINT KIND  NEWKIND
IF NEWKIND CONTAINS ' ' 
END
TABLE FILE HOLD
PRINT KIND  NEWKIND
IF NEWKIND OMITS ' ' 
END

As an aside, you can change the format of a field to be Unn to get hex output. Change COUNTRY to U10 and you get:

COUNTRY 
454E474C414E44202020 
4A4150414E2020202020 
4954414C592020202020 
57204745524D414E5920 
4652414E434520202020 

This can be useful to elicit weird characters in data.

Alan,

Thanks very much for that snippet of info, it will be very useful!!

T

Alan/JG,
Thanks very much for all your help, much appreciated.
Rgds
Tony

Information on how to read the KIND field so that we can apply filter for it was really good.

Can anyone suggest what information this field holds , do we get any information regarding the primary key of a table.

If not please post any suggestions from which we can get the primary key of a table from a Hold table structure.