Re: Help w/ Packed Decimal

    Hi Bob,

    Sorry for the delay, blame those pesky clients ( who believe our 24/7
claims ) and the Olympics.

    I thought I had been reasonably clear before, but I'll step through it.
A few things first:

*    Read the binary file with no encoding specified.  This still uses the
default encoding, but the net effect is no translation of the binary data.
That's what you want, because you will be converting the data yourself.

*    Don't use BinaryConverter.  As I mentioned in my previous message, it
doesn't understand BCD and the effective output for this purpose is garbage.

*    Read the API's.  AS400PackedDecimal wants the number of digits, not
the field length.

    Steps:

    Get a FileInputStream ( with buffering for efficiency ) on the binary
file.

Loop until read receives -1 for EOF.

    Read for the record length into a record-sized byte array.

    For Strings, use the constructor that takes a byte array, offset, length
and encoding.  I use "Cp500", but whatever works for you.

    For the packed fields, use an AS400PackedDecimal variable with the
proper number of digits and decimal positions.  From your example, use

a4PD = new AS400PackedDecimal( 7, 0 );

    Then use AS400PackedDecimal.toDouble(byte[] as400Value, int offset)
and cast to an int

or

use AS400PackedDecimal.toObject(byte[] as400Value, int offset) and get
the intValue() from the returned BigDecimal.

    Repeat as appropriate for each field in the record.

end of Loop.


                                                         Joe Sam

Joe Sam Shirah -        http://www.conceptgo.com
conceptGO         -        Consulting/Development/Outsourcing
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----- Original Message -----
From: <b.szemethy@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Java Programming on and around the iSeries / AS400"
<java400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 9:00 AM
Subject: Re: Help w/ Packed Decimal


> Thanks Joe and Mark -
> First a little background:  The field is 4 bytes long packed, 7 unpacked.
It's an integer value, so no decimals (Although I have dollar amounts to
deal with if I get past this).  I've tried the below code three different
ways:
> 1) Reading the file that had been converted to ASCII
> 2) Reading the binary file, with encoding set to "IBM1047"
> 3) Reading the binary file, with no encoding.
> Here's the code I'm using:
> String strValue = rec.substring (from-1, to);
> System.out.println("strValue = " + BinaryConverter.bytesToString
(strValue.getBytes () ));
> AS400PackedDecimal pd = new AS400PackedDecimal (4,0);
> double pdNum = pd.toDouble (BinaryConverter.stringToBytes (strValue));
> System.out.println ("Packed Decimal = " + pdNum);
> And the result (From all three attempts) :
> strValue = 0000000C
> java.lang.NumberFormatException
>         at
com.ibm.as400.access.BinaryConverter.stringToBytes(BinaryConverter.java:531)
>         at
com.ibm.as400.access.BinaryConverter.stringToBytes(BinaryConverter.java:485)
>         at
com.ibm.as400.access.BinaryConverter.stringToBytes(BinaryConverter.java:478)
>         at gcs.ParseCAT_GLS.parseRecord(ParseCAT_GLS.java:142)
>         at gcs.ParseCAT_GLS.parseRecord(ParseCAT_GLS.java:160)
>         at gcs.ParseCAT_GLS.parseRecord(ParseCAT_GLS.java:160)
>         at gcs.ParseCAT_GLS.getNextRecord(ParseCAT_GLS.java:117)
>         at gcs.TransformCAT_GLS.main(TransformCAT_GLS.java:44)
> Exception in thread "main"
> I thought about trying to create a SequentialFile object along with a
RecordFormat object, but that requires a connection to a server.
> -------------- Original message --------------
>
> >
> > 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
> >
> > Joe Sam Shirah - http://www.conceptgo.com
> > conceptGO - Consulting/Development/Outsourcing
> > Java Filter Forum: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/
> > Just the JDBC FAQs: http://www.jguru.com/faq/JDBC
> > Going International? http://www.jguru.com/faq/I18N
> > Que Java400? http://www.jguru.com/faq/Java400
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Bob Szemethy"
> > To:
> > 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
> > >