>From R:Base Help: "The recommended table data type for large text files is >VARCHAR."
Regards, Stephen Markson The Pharmacy Examining Board of Canada 416.979.2431 x251 -----Original Message----- From: rbase-l@googlegroups.com [mailto:rbase-l@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of James W. Kim, CPA, MBA Sent: February-21-18 6:32 PM To: rbase-l@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [RBASE-L] - Text file that retains trailing blank space Smart idea. It's a kind of paradigm shift to create the entire file including CR/LF in a VARCHAR variable. I will run some simulations to see if it will give me reliable output and how big the file can be. Thanks, James On 2/21/2018 11:02 AM, Stephen Markson wrote: > Forgot to mention, if using the technique below, you can use CHAR(32) for > spaces since each line ends with the end of line character(s). > > > Regards, > > Stephen Markson > The Pharmacy Examining Board of Canada > 416.979.2431 x251 > > -----Original Message----- > From: Stephen Markson > Sent: February-21-18 10:58 AM > To: rbase-l@googlegroups.com > Subject: RE: [RBASE-L] - Text file that retains trailing blank space > > Another approach is to put the data into a varchar variable and then write > the variable to a file. > > SET V vDataFile VARCHAR=NULL > SET V vLine TEXT=NULL > . > . > . > <loop to add records to file> > SET V vLine=<text value> > SET V vDataFile=(.vDataFile+.vLine+CHAR(13)) > <end of loop> > OUTPUT <datafile> > WRITE .vDataFile > OUTPUT SCREEN > > You can add "+CHAR(10)" after CHAR(13) above if you need CR+LF at the end of > each line. > > > Regards, > > Stephen Markson > The Pharmacy Examining Board of Canada > 416.979.2431 x251 > > -----Original Message----- > From: rbase-l@googlegroups.com [mailto:rbase-l@googlegroups.com] On > Behalf Of James W. Kim, CPA, MBA > Sent: February-20-18 1:25 PM > To: rbase-l@googlegroups.com > Subject: Re: [RBASE-L] - Text file that retains trailing blank space > > Thank you Stephen and others for the suggestions. Most of systems I work > with does not allow extended ASCII characters, so CHAR(160) would not work. > > I have been submitting formatted text files to various federal and state > authorities for years. Some systems, such as EFTPS, are tolerant and simple > SFIL and SPUT functions work well. However, Social Security Admin EFW2 and > IRS FIRE systems require fixed length files (512 and 750 characters long) > that are sparsely populated with actual data, accompanied by great deal of > blank spaces. > > For blank spaces, I have been using CHAR(32) which worked fine up to > R:Base X Build: 10.0.1.20225. However, newer updates tend to trim the > CHAR(32) hard spaces and I had to keep one of computers at build > 10.0.1.20225 for the purpose of creating these upload files. I just tried > CHAR(00) as suggested by Razzak and the null spaces seem to stick. So, I am > hopeful and will upload some test files. > > Thanks again, > James > > > On 2/20/2018 9:04 AM, Stephen Markson wrote: >> Hi James, >> >> Can you insert CHAR(160) as the 512th character? This will keep the >> preceding spaces and will show up as a blank. I don't know though whether >> the program that takes the file as input will tolerate that. >> >> Regards, >> >> Stephen Markson >> The Pharmacy Examining Board of Canada >> 416.979.2431 x251 >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: rbase-l@googlegroups.com [mailto:rbase-l@googlegroups.com] On >> Behalf Of James W. Kim, CPA, MBA >> Sent: February-19-18 4:26 PM >> To: rbase-l@googlegroups.com >> Subject: [RBASE-L] - Text file that retains trailing blank space >> >> Need some help with creating text file that retains blank spaces at the end >> of each row. >> >> I often need to create text files with fixed row length such as 512 >> or >> 750 characters in a row. When there are no data value near the right end of >> each row, the unused spaces need to be filled with blank spaces. >> >> The following is an example of how such text file would be built. The >> example creates a row that has "FLOOR 7" at 274th space in a row that has >> 512 characters. With some previous versions of R:Base, the trailing spaces >> is retained after insertion of data using SPUT function and line feed >> (CR/LF) would show up at 513th position. >> >> However, the current version would remove the trailing space when data is >> inserted using SPUT function and the (CR/LF) moves up to 281st position. >> >> Is there anyway I can force the retention of trailing spaces so that CR/LF >> always shows up at 513th position? >> >> Thanks in advance, >> >> James >> >> >> >> -- create text variable with blank spaces SET VAR vRow TEXT = NULL >> SET VAR vRow = (SFIL((CHAR(32)),512)) >> -- use SPUT function to fill in data >> SET VAR vRow = (SPUT(.vRow, 'start', 1)) SET VAR vRow = (SPUT(.vRow, >> 'Floor 7', 274)) >> >> -- write the variable to a text file >> OUTPUT sample.txt append >> WRITE .vRow USING >> '%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%' >> OUTPUT SCREEN >> >> > -- > For group guidelines, visit > http://www.rbase.com/support/usersgroup_guidelines.php > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "RBASE-L" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to rbase-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- For group guidelines, visit http://www.rbase.com/support/usersgroup_guidelines.php --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBASE-L" group. 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