Our users frequently request ',' delimited file from us; however, the standard format from webfocus does not handle that correctly.
I would like to ask your assistance for a way easily using the standard option from webfocus and generate a file for my users. Please advice.
Currently, we have to do the file with following codes, but there will be some problem if it is a large number of output fields.


DEFINE FILE FILEO
REC1/A136=ID||(',' | NAME)||(','|SMAL_EMAIL_ADDRESS)||(','|PHONE2);
END

Output will be like-

id,name,emailaddr,phone ---no " is needed

I'm not sure what you are asking.

FORMAT LOTUS will give you a comma delimited file as will FORMAT COMMA.

FORMAT COMT will give you a comma delimited file where the first line contains the column headings.

The comm format comes back with a " around the alpha fields, but what the user wants is just , instead.

for example-
namelast, name first, age, mm/dd/yy, 9999
instead of
"namelast", "name first", age, "mm/dd/yy", 9999

The reason for double-quotes is that you could have data with commas in it (e.g. a Company Name could be Johnson, Johnson and Jackson) and you wouldn't be able to differentiate between a comma to separate the columns and a comma in the data.

If you're not worried about that, you could do this:

FILEDEF H1 DISK apptest/H1.TXT
TABLE FILE CAR
PRINT
COUNTRY
COMPUTE COMM1/A1 = ',';
CAR
COMPUTE COMM2/A1 = ',';
MODEL
ON TABLE HOLD AS H1 FORMAT ALPHA
END

The output file will look something like this:

ENGLAND   ,JAGUAR          ,V12XKE AUTO             
JAPAN     ,DATSUN          ,B210 2 DOOR AUTO        
JAPAN     ,TOYOTA          ,COROLLA 4 DOOR DIX AUTO 
ITALY     ,ALFA ROMEO      ,2000 4 DOOR BERLINA     
W GERMANY ,BMW             ,2002 2 DOOR             
W GERMANY ,BMW             ,2002 2 DOOR AUTO        
W GERMANY ,BMW             ,3.0 SI 4 DOOR           
FRANCE    ,PEUGEOT         ,504 4 DOOR              

Thanks Francis. We are currently using this method. We use the || to eliminate the trailing spaces (which is important for our file size and for FTP purpose).

I hope there is a way from webfocus we just need to issue ON TABLE PCHOLD etc.

I'd be curious what the ouput is to be used for, but to pull out all extra blanks, your build a string may be the 'best' solution, however 'bad' it is.

I've created a tab delimited file and then used a perl script within my focexec to create a csv file. If you have perl installed on your webfocus server and you want to see an example, let me know.

Jim

Thanks. We don't have perl, but I guess you gave me an idea.
I'll read the csv file back and change tab to , using focus routine.

I don't know if this will help, but I developed a routine which takes a spreadsheet and creates a .MAS file so it's FOCUS-readable. The routine isn't 100% perfect, but it saves ME lots of tedious time trying to build a .MAS from scratch.

It uses good old green-screen FOCUS and Dialogue Manager.

Thanks for your reply. Excel will be helpful.