Record Reformatter

Output records are defined by:

All these values are entered via the Record Reformatter Editor. In analysis mode field types can be automatically determined. Due to the nature of text based records, this initial analysis will not be always correct, so full editing of the first approximation may be achived later. Alternatively, the structure may be entered manually, or from a Cobol Data definition file.

Variable Length Records
With fixed length records, each field and record has a pre-determined length. With variable length records, fields and records are marked by end characters. A typical marking would be fields are separated by a comma, and records by a CR. Thus two records could like as below:

field1,field2,A longer field,last field(CR)
fa,fb,fc,final field in this record(CR)

Thus to define such a file structure it is necessary to assign values for field and record delimiters. With the Record reformatter, both of these delimiters may be one or two characters long.

With variable length fields, only a single record structure can be handled.

Automatic Analysis Mode
A very powerful feature of RR32 is the ability to analyse records and create a outline input field definition automatically. Although this is not a complete substitute for documentation describing a record, it can be extremely useful in analysing an otherwise unknown record.

Analyse will try and determine field breaks, as well as field types. This includes text (ASCII or EBCDIC) and packed fields. The automatic field breaks may be moved, added or deleted. The generated routine may then be edited in any way required. This can include adding fields, deleting, concatenating and sorting field definitions.

Output Creation and Testing
Once an input record has been defined a typical application is to convert it into say a quote comma quote delimited record. The output can be automatically generated based on the input field locations and descriptions. Several typical output types may be created.

The output may then be edited as required so that lengths can be controlled or modified. In the same way fixed data fields may be added. 

Specification of Features

Field Conversions
Each field may be converted by the following commands. The position of each output field is entirely dependant on the user, and fields may be omitted or included multiple times as required.

Copy
This is probably the most common conversion rule to be used. It very simply copies the input field to the output field. If the input and output fields are different lengths, either the end of the field will be truncated, or padded with spaces.

Copy Reverse
This will copy the field, as described above, and then reverse it. Thus a field such as "Hello 1234" will become "4321 olleH." The reversing works on the final length of the output field, so if padding was required, the padding would end up at the start of the field. For fields of 1,2,4 bytes in length, this operation is identical to Swap 8, Swap 16 and Swap 32.

Copy Pascal
This will copy a Pascal text string. A Pascal string starts with a byte giving the length, followed by the string. The length byte is stripped when copying.

ASCII-EBCDIC
As in Copy but converts an ASCII input field to EBCDIC

EBCDIC-ASCII
As in copy but converts an EBCDIC field to ASCII

FILL ASCII
This fills the output field with the ASCII string defined in the parameters. Any codes in <> are treated as hex values. Example of string is 12<09>Hello. It may typically be used for inserting tags between fields, or even a ',' to make a record ',' delimited.

FILL HEX
This is the same as Fill ASCII but allows the user to insert non printing characters. For example to insert a CRLF, the output string 0D0A would be used. It may also be used to insert EBCDIC characters.

ASCII-PACKED
This converts an ASCII number to a packed field. This takes numbers and uses nibbles (4 bits) to represent the number, thus a number '1234', would be in hex, 31 32 33 34, and this would be converted to 01 23 4C, where C represents +. A D would represent -, and F, unsigned. This method of storing numbers effectively compresses the space required by a factor of 2, and is common within many IBM based record structures. It is also known as IBM COMP-3.

EBCDIC-PACKED This converts an EBCDIC number to a packed field. (See ASCII-PACKED)

Packed to ASCII

Packed to EBCDIC
Packed fields are a very common occurrence in many (IBM) records. The numbers may be signed, as above, or unsigned, in which case a series of hex characters 12 34 56 would represent the decimal number 123456.

Convert Date
The convert date operator will convert a date field to a DDMMYYYY date format. The actual output date format is selected on the configuration screen of the routine. The type of date conversion is dependant on the combo box at the right of the line.

Conversion options are as below:

TIME
Inserts system time in output string, as HH:MM:SS

SWAP 32
Swaps 4 byte arrays. This can be useful to convert numbers from little endolian to big endolian.

SWAP 16
Swaps two characters from the input string example Input = InterMedia output = nIetMrdeai.

SWAP 8
Swaps two nibbles from an input byte. For example, 0D(hex) would be converted to D0(hex).

Record Count
This inserts the current record count +/- Number HiLo +/- Number LoHi Vax Float.

This converts the input binary number to an ASCII string. The output buffer is right justified, and if not large enough the most significant digits will be truncated. If the value is negative, a '-' sign will be added. This conversion feature can be extremely important when trying to import binary files into a text file format.

The range of numbers is as below:

 Digits Output buffer size

For Vax floating point numbers there are 4 defined lengths:

• F-Float 4 bytes
• D-Float 8 Bytes
• G-Float 8 Bytes (Not implemented yet)
• H-Float 16 Bytes (Not implemented yet)

All Vax numbers are signed, and the ordering is fixed.

The size of the input number will be taken from the input field definition, and may be 1-4 bytes in length. The ordering of the number will be high byte first for HiLo, and low byte first for LoHi.

For floating point numbers (8 characters in length) the output is almost unlimited. If the output is longer than the field allowed for, the number will be displayed in scientific notation, eg 2.63E5. If the output from a floating point number contains invalid characters, this is most likely one of two reasons:

a) It is not a floating point number

b) The order should be swapped, i.e. HiLo, or LoHi

The 6 digit character is a special floating point implementation. It is not known how standard this is.

The 6 byte array is as below:

Byte 1 mantissa

Byte 2-6 Exponent in Lo-Hi ordering

The exponent is in the range of 0.5 - 1.5

The mantissa is a multiple of 2

Number HiLo

Number LoHi
This is as above, but the number is not signed, and so the output buffer can be one character shorter.

Cobol Num
This rule will convert signed strings from Cobol systems. The string includes it's sign as part of the last digit. The output may also be formatted with the same commands as described below in Formatting Numeric fields.

Formatting Numeric fields
Numeric fields have an extra edit field at the right of the screen. This is to allow for formatting of the output. By using this the number of decimal places may be determined and leading zeros displayed or suppressed. The options are extremely variable and the command line is in the structure below £#,4.2 where the symbols are as below If a £, or $ sign is shown this means that the money sign is added in front of the number. If # is set then leading zeros are displayed If a , is in the line, then significant numbers are broken down into groups of 3, separated by a comma, such as 1,234,567.12. The final number is the number of significant and decimal places. Thus 3.2 would be 3 leading digits and 2 decimal places. If the field is left blank, then no numeric formatting will take place. If the output field is too short, then significant t digits are truncated.

Some examples:

• £3.4 £100.1234
• #6.2 0000012.99
• #,6.2 123,456.55
• ,8.2 1,435.55
• 5.0 43241

TransTab (InterMedia for Windows only)
The TransTab option is the same of 'Copy Field', but an IMW translation table may be applied. The translation table is any IMW table and it performs a complete string and byte translation. Thus the output string may be longer than the input string. If too long for the output field, it will be truncated (from the right).

Typical applications could be case mapping (make all lower case, or all upper case) or handling accented characters, or different EBCDIC conversions.

There is a limitation of a maximum number of 8 different translation tables definable within a single record reformatter table. There is no limit on the number of fields that may be converted.

IB Field
This will insert and IntelliBase / IntelliBase 95 field marker. The parameter should be a number between 1 and 9999. The output data is always a 4 digit number, preceded by a 0EH, and followed by a 0FH. The length should always be 6.