I am trying to save a numeric-with-decimal-places(f8.6) variable from an SPSS file into a fixed ASCII file. The goal is to write it into certain columns of the ASCII (21 to 30).
WRITE OUTFILE='C:\misc\ascii.dat'
ENCODING='UTF8'
TABLE /1
variable 21-30.
exe.
writes to the correct positions, but not with decimals.
variable 21-30 (f)
does the same thing.
variable (f8.6)
saves with decimals, but on positions 1 to 10.
variable 21-30 (f8.6)
results in an error, because apparently you cannot specify both columns and format.
I know two workarounds, but both involve additional data editing, which I'd rather not do:
Convert variable to string and save it as string - but I am not sure about the implications (encoding, decimal places, or whatever other thing I am not even considering)
add an empty string variable with length of 20 before my variable.
But is there a straightforward way of doing this, without workarounds ?
You can add the 20 spaces in the command itself, like this:
WRITE OUTFILE='C:\misc\ascii.dat'
ENCODING='UTF8'
TABLE / ' ' YourNumVar (f8.6) .
exe.
Related
Hello guys I want to convert my non delimited file into a delimited file
Example of the file is as follows.
Name. CIF Address line 1 State Phn Address line 2 Country Billing Address line 3
Alex. 44A. Biston NJ 25478163 4th,floor XY USA 55/2018 kenning
And so on all the data are in this format.
First three lines are metadata and then the data.
How can I make it delimited in proper format using logic.
There are two parts in the problem:
how to find the column widths
how to split each line into fields and output a new line with delimiters
I could not propose an automated solution for the first one, because (not knowing anything about the metadata format), there is no clear way to find where one column ends and the next one begins. Some of the column headings contain multiple space-separated words and space is also used as a separator between the headings (and apparently one cannot use the rule "more than one space means the end of a heading name" because there's only one space between "Address line 2" and "Country" - and they're clearly separate columns. Clearly, finding the correct column widths requires understanding English and this is not something that you can write a program for.
For the second problem, things are much easier - once you have the column positions. If you figure the column positions manually (or programmatically, if you know something about the metadata that I don't - and you have a simple method for finding what's a column heading), then a program written in AWK can do this, for example:
cols="8,15,32,40,53,66,83,105"
awk_prog='BEGIN {
nt=split(cols,tabs,",")
delim=","
ORS=""
}
{ o=1 ;
for (i in tabs) { t=tabs[i] ; f=substr($0,o,t-o); sub(" *$","",f) ; print f
delim ; o=t } ;
print substr($0, o) "\n"
}'
awk -v cols="$cols" "$awk_prog" input_file
NOTE that the above program does not deal correctly with the case when the separator character (e.g. ",") appears inside the data. If you decide to use this as-is, be sure to use a separator that is not present in the input data. It may be better to modify the code to escape any separator characters found in the input data (there are different ways to do this - depends on what you plan to feed the output file to).
I use an ODBC table handler to read data from Excel and CSV files into an AMPL model. But the thing I encountered probably doesn't have much to do with the precise programs and programming language I use.
Among the data are two specific types of strings: three-digit alphabetic and six-digit alphanumeric.
When the three-digit alphabetic type includes a NAN string, AMPL throws an error. As I found out, the reason is that it understands NAN as "NaN" (not a number). It cannot use this as an index.
The six-digit alphanumeric type sometimes include strings like 3E1234. This seems to be a problem because AMPL (or the handler) understands this as a number in scientific notation. So it reads 3*10^1234, which is handled as infinity. So when there is one 3E1234 entry and one 3E1235 entry, it sees them both as infinity.
I understand these two. And although they are annoying, I can work with that. Now I encountered that a string SK1234 is parsed as the number 1234. I have learned a bit of programming in college, but I don't have any idea why this happens. Is the prefix SK anything special?
EDIT: Here is an example that reproduces the error:
The model file:
set INDEX;
param value;
The "run" file:
table Table1 IN "tableproxy" "odbc" "DSN=NDE" "Test.csv": INDEX <- [Index], value ~ Value;
read table Table1;
NDE is a user DSN that uses the Microsoft Text Driver in the appropriate folder.
And the CSV file:
Index,Value
SK1202,1
SK1445,2
SK0124,3
SK7896,4
SK1,5
AB1234,6
After running all this code, I type display INDEX and get
set INDEX := 1202 1445 124 7896 1 Missing;
So the field Index is treated as a numeric field with the first five entries converted to a number. The last entry cannot be converted so it is treated as Missing.
The DSN's setting is that it sets the type according to the first 25 lines. For some reason, it understands the SK... entries as numbers and therefore reads all as numbers.
For the Text ODBC driver to detect column type correctly, values should be quoted:
Index,Value
'SK1202',1
'SK1445',2
'SK0124',3
'SK7896',4
'SK1',5
'AB1234',6
I am reading a COBOL program file and I am struggling to understand the way the STRING command works in the following example
STRING WK-NO-EMP-SGE
','
WK-DT-DEB-PER-FEU-TEM
','
WK-DT-FIN-PER-FEU-TEM
DELIMITED BY SIZE
INTO UUUUUU-CO-CLE-ERR-DB2
I have three possible understandings of what it does:
Either the code concatenate each variables into UUUUUU-CO-CLE-ERR-DB2 and separate each values with ',', and the last variable is delimited by size;
Either the code concatenate each variables into UUUUUU-CO-CLE-ERR-DB2 and separate each values with ',', but all the values are delimited by size (meaning that the DELIMITED BY SIZE in this case applies to all the values passed in the string command;
Or each variable is delimited by a specific character, for example WK-NO-EMP-SGE would be delimited by ',', WK-DT-DEB-PER-FEU-TEM by ',' and WK-DT-FIN-PER-FEU-TEM would then be DELIMITED BY SIZE.
Which of my reading is actually the good one?
Here's the syntax-diagram for STRING (from the Enterprise COBOL Language Reference):
Now you need to know how to read it.
Fortunately, the same document tells you how:
How to read the syntax diagrams
Use the following description to read the syntax diagrams in this
document:
. Read the syntax diagrams from left to right, from top to bottom,
following the path of the line.
The >>--- symbol indicates the beginning of a syntax diagram.
The ---> symbol indicates that the syntax diagram is continued on the
next line.
The >--- symbol indicates that the syntax diagram is continued from
the previous line.
The --->< symbol indicates the end of a syntax diagram. Diagrams of
syntactical units other than complete statements start with the >---
symbol and end with the ---> symbol.
. Required items appear on the horizontal line (the main path).
. Optional items appear below the main path.
. When you can choose from two or more items, they appear vertically,
in a stack.
If you must choose one of the items, one item of the stack appears on
the main path.
If choosing one of the items is optional, the entire stack appears
below the main path.
. An arrow returning to the left above the main line indicates an item
that can be repeated.
A repeat arrow above a stack indicates that you can make more than one
choice from the stacked items, or repeat a single choice.
. Variables appear in italic lowercase letters (for example, parmx).
They represent user-supplied names or values.
. If punctuation marks, parentheses, arithmetic operators, or other
such symbols are shown, they must be entered as part of the syntax.
All that means, if you follow it through, that your number 2 is correct.
You can use a delimiter (when you don't have fixed-length data) or just use the size. Any item which is not explicit in how it is delimited, is delimited by the next DELIMITED BY statement.
One thing to watch for with STRING, which doesn't matter in your case, is that the target field does not get space-padded if the data is shorter than the target. With variable-length data, you need to clear the field to space before the STRING executes.
There is a nuance one must grasp in order to understand the results. DELIMITED BY SIZE can be misleading if one has experience in other programming languages.
Each of the three variables has a size that is defined in WORKING-STORAGE. Let's presume it looks something like this.
05 WK-NO-EMP-SGE PIC X(04).
05 WK-DT-DEB-PER-FEU-TEM PIC X(10).
05 WK-DT-FIN-PER-FEU-TEM PIC X(10).
If the value of the variables were set like this:
MOVE 'BOB' TO WK-NO-EMP-SGE.
MOVE 'Q' TO WK-DT-DEB-PER-FEU-TEM.
MOVE 'D19EIEIO2B' TO WK-DT-FIN-PER-FEU-TEM.
Then one might expect the value of UUUUUU-CO-CLE-ERR-DB2 to be:
BOB,Q,D19EIEIO2B
But it would actually be:
BOB ,Q ,D19EIEIO2B
I am trying to use the "food_descriptions" fixture in a "minitest" test in Rails 4 beta1:
butter:
NDB_No: "01001"
FdGrp_Cd: "0100"
Long_Desc: "Butter, salted"
The test I have is this:
it "must work" do
food_descriptions(:butter).NDB_No.must_equal "01001"
end
However, when I run the test I get this error: Expected: "01001" Actual: 1001
I don't understand why that number is not recognized as a string. I've read that yml treats values that start with 0 as octal values, so adding the quotes should be enough to treat it as a string but is not working. I have also try the pipe "|" sign but doesn't work either.
Any idea why?
Quick Answer (TL;DR)
YAML 1.2 leading zeros can be preserved by quoting a scalar value.
Context
YAML 1.2
Scalar value with leading zeros
Problem
Scenario: Developer wishes to specify a scalar value with leading zero in a YAML 1.2 file.
When parsed, the leading zero gets omitted or truncated
Solution
Quote a scalar value in YAML to have it parsed as a string.
Leading zeros are preserved for non-numeric values.
Pitfalls
Data type casting for databases or programming language context may convert string scalar to numeric scalar value.
It turns out the problem is not what I thought it was (yml). The problem was that the fixtures were being pushed to the DB and the tests were actually retrieving the entry from the database (I thought the fixture were just in memory), and the database column type for that value was integer, not string, thus the leading zeros were being removed. My real problem was that I wanted that column to be the primary key of the table of type string and I didn't realize that the migration I created didn't change the type of the column to string in the test database.
I have some csv record which are variable in length , for example:
0005464560,45667759,ZAMTR,!To ACC 12345678,DR,79.85
0006786565,34567899,ZAMTR,!To ACC 26575443,DR,1000
I need to seperate each of these fields and I need the last field which should be a money.
However, as I read the file, and unstring the record into fields, I found that the last field contain junk value at the end of itself. The amount(money) field should be 8 characters, 5 digit at the front, 1 dot, 2 digit at the end. The values from the input could be any value such as 13.5, 1000 and 354.23 .
"FILE SECTION"
FD INPUT_FILE.
01 INPUT_REC PIC X(66).
"WORKING STORAGE SECTion"
01 WS_INPUT_REC PIC X(66).
01 WS_AMOUNT_NUM PIC 9(5).9(2).
01 WS_AMOUNT_TXT PIC X(8).
"MAIN SECTION"
UNSTRING INPUT_REC DELIMITED BY ","
INTO WS_ID_1, WS_ID_2, WS_CODE, WS_DESCRIPTION, WS_FLAG, WS_AMOUNT_TXT
MOVE WS_AMOUNT_TXT(1:8) TO WS_AMOUNT_NUM(1:8)
DISPLAY WS_AMOUNT_NUM
From the display, the value is rather normal: 345.23, 1000, just as what are, however, after I wrote the field into a file, here is what they become:
79.85^M^#^#
137.35^M^#
I have inspect the field WS_AMOUNT_NUM, which came from the field WS_AMOUNT_TXT, and found that ^# is a kind of LOW-VALUE. However, I cannot find what is ^M, it is not a space, not a high-value.
I am guessing, but it looks like you may be reading variable length records from a file into a fixed length
COBOL record. The junk
at the end of the COBOL record is giving you some grief. Hard to say how consistent that junk is going
to be from one read to the next (data beyond the bounds of actual input record length are technically
undefined). That junk ends up
being included in WS_AMOUNT_TXT after the UNSTRING
There are a number of ways to solve this problem. The suggestion I am giving you here may not
be optimal, but it is simple and should get the job done.
The last INTO field, WS_AMOUNT_TXT, in your UNSTRING statement is the one that receives all of the trailing
junk. That junk needs to be stripped off. Knowing that the only valid characters in the last field are
digits and the decimal character, you could clean it up as follows:
PERFORM VARYING WS_I FROM LENGTH OF WS_AMOUNT_TXT BY -1
UNTIL WS_I = ZERO
IF WS_AMOUNT_TXT(WS_I:1) IS NUMERIC OR
WS_AMOUNT_TXT(WS_I:1) = '.'
MOVE ZERO TO WS_I
ELSE
MOVE SPACE TO WS_AMOUNT_TXT(WS_I:1)
END-IF
END-PERFORM
The basic idea in the above code is to scan from the end of the last UNSTRING output field
to the beginning replacing anything that is not a valid digit or decimal point with a space.
Once a valid digit/decimal is found, exit the loop on the assumption that the rest will
be valid.
After cleanup use the intrinsic function NUMVAL as outlined in my answer to your
previous question
to convert WS_AMOUNT_TXT into a numeric data type.
One final piece of advice, MOVE SPACES TO INPUT_REC before each READ to blow away data left over
from a previous read that might be left in the buffer. This will protect you when reading a very "short"
record after a "long" one - otherwise you may trip over data left over from the previous read.
Hope this helps.
EDIT Just noticed this answer to your question about reading variable length files. Using a variable length input record is a better approach. Given the
actual input record length you can do something like:
UNSTRING INPUT_REC(1:REC_LEN) INTO...
Where REC_LEN is the variable specified after OCCURS DEPENDING ON for the INPUT_REC file FD. All the junk you are encountering occurs after the end of the record as defined by REC_LEN. Using reference modification as illustrated above trims it off before UNSTRING does its work to separate out the individual data fields.
EDIT 2:
Cannot use reference modification with UNSTRING. Darn... It is possible with some other COBOL dialects but not with OpenVMS COBOL. Try the following:
MOVE INPUT_REC(1:REC_LEN) TO WS_BUFFER
UNSTRING WS_BUFFER INTO...
Where WS_BUFFER is a working storage PIC X variable long enough to hold the longest input record. When you MOVE a short alpha-numeric field to a longer one, the destination field is left justified with spaces used to pad remaining space (ie. WS_BUFFER). Since leading and trailing spaces are acceptable to the NUMVAL fucnction you have exactly what you need.
I have a reason for pushing you in this direction. Any junk that ends up at the trailing end of a record buffer when reading a short record is undefined. There is a possibility that some of that junk just might end up being a digit or a decimal point. Should this occur, the cleanup routine I originally suggested would fail.
EDIT 3:
There are no ^# in the resulting WS_AMOUNT_TXT, but still there are a ^M
Looks like the file system is treating <CR> (that ^M thing) at the end of each record as data.
If the file you are reading came from a Windows platform and you are now
reading it on a UNIX platform that would explain the problem. Under Windows records
are terminated with <CR><LF> while on UNIX they are terminated with <LF> only. The
UNIX file system treats <CR> as if it were part of the record.
If this is the case, you can be pretty sure that there will be a single <CR> at the
end of every record read. There are a number of ways to deal with this:
Method 1: As you already noted, pre-edit the file using Notepad++ or some other
tool to remove the <CR> characters before processing through your COBOL program.
Personally I don't think this is the best way of going about it. I prefer to use a COBOL
only solution since it involves fewer processing steps.
Method 2: Trim the last character from each input record before processing it. The last
character should always be <CR>. Try the following if you
are reading records as variable length and have the actual input record length available.
SUBTRACT 1 FROM REC_LEN
MOVE INPUT_REC(1:REC_LEN) TO WS_BUFFER
UNSTRING WS_BUFFER INTO...
Method 3: Treat <CR> as a delimiter when UNSTRINGing as follows:
UNSTRING INPUT_REC DELIMITED BY "," OR x"0D"
INTO WS_ID_1, WS_ID_2, WS_CODE, WS_DESCRIPTION, WS_FLAG, WS_AMOUNT_TXT
Method 4: Condition the last receiving field from UNSTRING by replacing trailing
non digit/non decimal point characters with spaces. I outlined this solution a litte earlier in this
question. You could also explore the INSPECT statement using the REPLACING option (Format 2). This should be able to do pretty much the same thing - just replace all x"00" by SPACE and x"0D" by SPACE.
Where there is a will, there is a way. Any of the above solutions should work for you. Choose the one you are most comfortable with.
^M is a carriage return.
Would Google Refine be useful for rectifying this data?