Re: Importing data from a spreadsheet to a PF

from: John Yeung <gallium.arsenide@xxxxxxxxx>
subject: Re: Importing data from a spreadsheet to a PF

On Tue, Aug 16, 2022 at 12:20 PM James H. H. Lampert via MIDRANGE-L
<midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

We've got a customer who is trying to populate a PF from a spreadsheet.
He's currently trying to do it through iAccess (or whatever IBM is
calling it this week), and it's giving him a lot of trouble, telling him
field lengths in the target file are too short. He has tried lengthening
fields, and they still come up short.

One of the issues is not the "length" per se, but the decimal
precision. If the data has more digits to the right of the decimal
point than the receiving file can accommodate, that can be a source of
problems.

The easiest solution is probably to have Excel round to an appropriate
number of digits. Next easiest, since it seems this user is able to
define his own physical files, is to use float to receive, instead of
any fixed-decimal type.

I'm guessing he's trying to send it as some form of CSV, but I'm not
certain.

It's possible, but I doubt it. I think it's more likely he's using
some feature that comes with ACS or its predecessors which allows
direct transfer from an actual, running instance of Excel.

There are libraries to handle reading Excel (not CSV) files, but
that's probably beyond the scope of this problem.

John Y.