OK, off to a good start but I really didn't explain myself too well before. I
have used COPY STRUCTURE EXTENDED already within an application and based
some pretty reports off of the data that is generated. Using AFIELDS works,
kind of. It will recreate the table but I have to have a way to recreate
the table using user input.
Example: the original table has the following columns:
fullname C (25)
company C (50)
addr1 C (33)
addr2 C (33)
state C (2)
city C (30)
zip5 C (5)
zip4 C (4)
Our software will take the above format but convert it to it's own format
which doesn't always handle some types of data well and has space
limitations on other fields. It will try to parse fullname into first name,
middle initial, last name, suffix, prefix and truncate company to 36
characters. Because of that, we have to include these fields again at the
end of the data to insure that the data will be as the client specified.
Our default format remains a constant with the exception of the extra data
that the user defines to be placed again at the end of the file. In this
example, lets say that we had to include both the fullname and the company
at the end of the file. The format will look something like this:
(The rest of the format defined in 21 different columns)
junk1 C (2) -- the first 'junk' column will always be [,"]
include1 C (25) -- fullname column is the first included extra column.
junk2 C (3) -- this will always be [","] when it isn't the first or last
column
include2 C (50) -- company column is the second included extra column.
junk3 C (1) -- the last 'junk' column will always be ["]
In general, all fields are fixed length format except for the extra included
data which would come from the user selections.
In the past, I have done all of the table manipulation by hand, changing
table structure and modifying my code to fit the new table structure but
now we need to have it be more 'user friendly' so that I can let my
co-workers share in the fun and have more of a consistent way of working
with the data. Using AFIELDS and COPY STRUCTURE EXTENDED does a great job
of copying the structure but not so great about taking into consideration
the decisions about what the user wishes to include and what not to include
in this type of situation.
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