RE: Tab-delimited file to IFS

Thanks Scott.

I misread my conversion table.  Although I am curious about writing directly
to a stream file.  I've never done this before.  I'll post the question on
RPG400-L.

Joel Burke
Programmer/Analyst 
MARYWOOD UNIVERSITY
2300 Adams Ave.
Scranton, PA 18509
(570)348-6221


-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Scott Klement
Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 1:01 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Tab-delimited file to IFS

I am trying to create a tab delimited file and then use CPYTOSTMF to copy

it

to our IFS.

Why?  Why not write it directly to the IFS?  If you're not going to to use 
an external defifinition, what is it gaining you to write it to a physical 
file?  Do you plan to parse it with RPG II or something?

In RPG ILE, I populate a 4400 character alpha string with character fields
seperated by tabs(x'09').  I then output these strings to the file I just
created.

x'09' would be the correct code to write on the PC, as it's the ASCII code 
for tab.  HOWEVER... the iSeries isn't an ASCII system, it's an EBCDIC 
system.  The EBCDIC code for tab is x'05'

When CPYTOSTMF converts your PF to a stream file, it will translate the 
x'05' to a x'09' (assuming you get translation working properly, that is). 
However, right now you have it translating x'09' to x'8D', and since x'09' 
isn't a tab, neither is x'8D', so you have a mess.

Also I strongly recomment *not* using QASCII, I can almost guarantee that 
some characters won't translate the way you expect them to.  Instead, 
change the data conversion to *AUTO and specify the correct codepage for 
the PC file.

Or, better yet, write it to a stream file in the first place.  Don't mess 
around with a PF and CPYTOSTMF, since all they do is create extra steps 
without adding any value.  If you want an example of how to do that in ILE 
RPG, please ask me for one on the RPG400-L mailing list.  Then I can 
answer any questions you have there (as they'll be RPG questions.)