[ABE.pm] Re: A coupla' more Qs
Faber Fedor
faber at linuxnj.com
Thu Oct 21 10:34:47 CDT 2004
On 21/10/04 09:29 -0400, Phil Lawrence wrote:
>
> On Oct 13, 2004, at 23:02, Faber Fedor wrote:
> >2. I HATE MAINFRAMERS AND THEIR FIXED-LENGTH RECORDS! (This ML isn't
> >spidered by Google, is it? :-) Does anyone have a good tool for
> >determining where and how long fixed length records are? I've been
> >using
> >the unpack() function and doing a trial and error (thank Ghu for
> >ptkdb!).
>
>
> Yes. I recall writing a mainframe data-dictionary parser. If you have
> access to the data dictionary, I might be able to help out.
"access to the data dictionary"?! You kids expect everything handed to
you on a silver platter! :-)
All I had was the data file and had to figure out where one field
started and ended. Manually counting across 200 columns is fraught with
errors and I ended up running the program several times going "tweak
this field over one", run the program "tweek the next field over two",
etc. PITFA!
--
Regards,
Faber
Linux New Jersey: Open Source Solutions for New Jersey
http://www.linuxnj.com
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