> This is where regular expressions really shine.
>
> /ISA(.).{2}\1.{10}\1.{2}/
>
> which says "look for the upper case letters ISA followed by a single
> character
> (remember it), followed by 2 characters, your remembered character, 10
> characters, that pesky character again, followed by 2 more ... and on i
One problem with anything which assumes a fixed length of 106 (or even the
'negative control number' size of 107) bytes is, it cannot recognize
'blocked' format; that is, 80 (or other value) characters, <newline>rest of
segment..... OK, solved that.... now deal simulataneously with the problem
when the 'segment terminator' *is* <newline>.... and don't forget <newline>
can be *either* CRLF (PC) or LF only ('nix).... oh, and did I mention?
There is still some data out there in which data are nominally one segment
per record, but space-filled to some fixed record length following the
segment's significant data.
Oh yes, I almost forgot... all these different formats may exist within the
same input, the only constant being the format will not change WITHIN an
Interchange.
Absent some constraints on "input format", there's really no shortcut to
"find valid ISA (or any other) segment" except doing it more or less
character by character and keeping track of what you've got so far, which is
how I wrote my scanner back in '94 or '95 or so. Almost all the maintenance
on it since then has been dealing with new and imaginative forms of
invalid-ness.
Michael C. Mattias
Tal Systems Inc.
Racine WI
[email protected]
.
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