Re: Help w/ Packed Decimal

    Hi Bob,

    You need to bring the file across as binary and then do a field by field
conversion using the String and
com.ibm.as400.access.AS400PackedDecimal classes.

    If you bring it down as text, each byte, typically, is converted to
ASCII.  That doesn't work for true numeric fields because they aren't
characters but binary values that don't map to a character set.  The same is
true for a non-EBCDIC file that contains numbers and characters, and is why
trying to just use an encoding translation on that kind of file doesn't
work.

    As Mark indicated, BinaryConverter doesn't understand that C, D and/or F
are sign indicators and takes them at their hex value.  While we are
accustomed to 'F' for positive values on the '400, 'C' is an explicit
positive used often on mainframes.  If my recollection is correct, any value
other than 'D' is taken as positive.

    Have fun,


                                                         Joe Sam

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Szemethy" <b.szemethy@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <java400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004 10:51 PM
Subject: Help w/ Packed Decimal


> Hi all -
>
> A quick question about a flat file built on a S/390, that I am trying to
> process on a Windows box using JTOpen.
>
> I have access to the file only though an FTP applet that our HQ
> maintains, and I pulled the file down as text and as binary.  When I'm
> processing the file, I have no trouble with the text fields, but there
> are some packed decimal fields that are not coming across.
>
> I also was able to parse the binary file when I set the encoding to
> "IBM1047", but had the same problem with the packed fileds.
>
> I tried the BinaryConverter class, and the method to convert to Hex
> string for the byte array, and for the text and binary files, it returns
> the following sting for a 4 byte number : "0000000C", which I understand
> to be 12, but I know the number should be 1.
>
> So my question is this:  Can I parse a packed-decimal field in a file
> that has been translated to ASCII or Unicode?  Thanks for any help.
>
> Bob
>