I had a tough time finding any good documentation on this, so I'm deciding to post my question instead. I apologize if this has already been answered by a previous posting.

I have a FOCUS file that gets loaded with month-to-date trade data everyday. The file grew by 6% in size overnight, so I wanted to take a look at what was different between the load from 2 days ago and last night's build. I'm using a USE statement to concatenate the two files together, however, I need to DEFINE a variable in order to determine which file each record came from.

USE
\\server\folder\FILE01.FOC AS FILE01
\\server\folder2\FILE01.FOC AS FILE01
END
DEFINE
FILE FILE01
SRC/A4=IF folder THEN 'PREV'
ELSE IF folder2 THEN 'CURR';
END

The DEFINE above is psuedo-code. I need some help filling in the actual code that I can use in each IF condition. Is there a system variable like &FOCFOCEXEC available or something that would tell me which path the record was sourced from. The FOC files have the same names, so I can't differentiate them by name. I also am aware that I can do this with separate hold files, but I'm hoping to learn a new...and useful...technique. Thanks in advance for your time.

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

The USE concatenates the two files - there will be no way to identify records from each file. you could identify records based on some other field - e.g. a Date field.

Instead of using the USE command to concatenate the two files, try using the MORE command, something like this:

USE
\\server\folder\FILE01.FOC AS FILE01
END
-RUN

DEFINE FILE FILE01
SRC/A4 = 'PREV';
END
-RUN

TABLE FILE FILE01
PRINT
*
SRC
ON TABLE HOLD AS HPREV
END
-RUN

USE
\\server\folder2\FILE01.FOC AS FILE01
END
-RUN

DEFINE FILE FILE01
SRC/A4 = 'CURR';
END
-RUN

TABLE FILE FILE01
PRINT
*
SRC
ON TABLE HOLD AS HCURR
END
-RUN

TABLE FILE HPREV
PRINT *
ON TABLE HOLD AS HALL
MORE
FILE HCURR
END
-RUN

If you have individual masters for the two files, you don't have to create the intermediary HOLD files.

Thanks Francis. I was hoping their was something accessible in the internal matrix or something that could differenctiate the two files even after they were concatenated. I had already looked for a run date-type field that I could use, but unfortunately, we didn't design the file to include a field such as that. I'll stick with the temporary hold file methods.

Do it the correct way and add an extra column to the FOCUS tables.

i.e. SOURCE/Awhatever