At 10:17 PM 9/25/2001 +0800, Raghavendra Rao wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I have a file in which the amount fields are stored as I2 i.e. S9(7)V99
>COMP. We are FTPing this file to a client location and unfortunately they
>are having difficulties in reading these fields. So I thought of
>converting this field into numeric before sending it and this entire
>extract process is being done in Suprtool. I have done this in a 2 step
>process. If there is any better way then please let me know about it.

There is a slightly quicker way to accomplish this, in Suprtool you can do a:

in testt001
out testt002,display
xeq

This will mean that the file will no longer be self-describing but all numeric
fields (except for Real and IEEE) will be converted to display values. Since
you are just ftp'ing this file to a client location, the loss of SD information
will probably not be a problem. One note to be aware of Positive values for
I and
J type fields are converted into neutral (i.e. no sign) display values by
default, for
both methods (output,display and extract method that you used). Negative values
should show as "overpunch" values. This means that a negative number such as
123-, would show as 12L, where the final digit in the number is "overpunched".

There is a chart showing this representation in the output,display section
of your
manual, (or winhelp, pdf or HTMLHelp docs).


>When I do a PRINT on both those files, I see junk results in first file,
>but I am able to see the amounts in 2nd file (without the sign). However
>if I do a LIST STANDARD then I am able to see both those amount fields in
>both those files properly.
The junk results that you see in the testt001 file is just the binary
representation of
the fields, therefore they are not able to be displayed as recognizable
values readily.
  The amounts in the second file are shown without the sign in this case if
they
were positive to begin with. Please see the note above on the overpunch
information.
(You can preserve the positive sign as well with the extract $signed
option, please e-mail
me if you want more information)

Just a note to let you know the output ,display file will have a slightly
larger record size
as the I2 field will be converted to a Z10 field.

Of course their may be better ways of doing this if we knew the end
intended use of the
data. Typically output,display is/was used for transferring to other
mainframes. I used to
use this a lot when transferring data to IBM mainframes.

If the intended use is for a PC application, you can look at either:

1) output,prn option of the output command
2) STExport companion product of the Suprtool suite of products

If the intended use is for some other application or database then please
let me know we
have lots of options.

Finally just to let you know we (Robelle) have a listservice similar to
3000-L to get answers
on all Robelle software. You can find out how to subscribe to this list at:

http://forum.robelle.com/

Hope this helps and have a great day.


Sincerely,


Neil Armstrong
Senior Programmer
Robelle

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