Data Build Manual

Conversion Environment Menu
Data Build Reference
7–8 099331 Tandem Computers Incorporated
Records can vary in length. Records in an unstructured file must be terminated
with a CR/LF sequence. Embedded blanks are acceptable in non-numeric data,
actual single or double quote characters embedded within a surrounded string
must occur twice, signed numeric data must be leading and separate with the
default positive, and provided values will be expanded into matching target fields
using conventional standards for data movement (that is, left justify and blank fill
character fields, and right justify and zero fill numeric fields).
All fields must be accounted for; each input record must contain data followed by
the separator character, or the separator character alone, for each target field or
column.
Each input field value is in ASCII display format:
Source data of display format can optionally be enclosed within single quote
(‘) or double quote (“) signs.
Data must be enclosed within quote signs if the data contains a delimiter
character.
Spaces within data are allowed whether or not the data is enclosed in
quotes.
If quote signs (either single or double) enclose the data, a quote character
within the data is represented by two quote characters (either two single
quotes or two double quotes)).
If the data is not enclosed within quote signs, you can use single or double
quote characters within the data.
The following example illustrates the use of ‘ or “ as a data character and
as an enclosing character; as a data character it must be repeated only if it
is the same as the enclosing quote character:
Data Can be Represented by
person’s person’s
“person’s”
‘person’’s’
he said, “if you ... “ he said, “if you ...”
‘he said, “if you ...”’
“he said, ““if you ...”””
he said, ‘if you ... ‘ he said, ‘if you ...’
“he said, ‘if you ...’”
‘he said, “if you ...”
Source data of computational target or output format is not enclosed within
quote signs and must not contain any spaces (within, preceding, or trailing the
data).
A null value in the input data is represented by a delimiter immediately following
the previous delimiter:
A null first field is indicated by a leading delimiter