Or you could view them in a HEX editor, if you want to see the binary stuff.
(Packed decimal is very easy to read in HEX)
-----Original Message-----
From: Wirt Atmar <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Saturday, November 22, 1997 7:20 PM
Subject: Re: How to view flat files with binary/comp data?


>Nobody ([log in to unmask]) writes:
>
>>I've downloaded some MPE flatfiles to my PC. Besides Notepad, what's the
>best
>>way to view them so that all the columns stay aligned when some of the
>>fields are binary or computational fields? Even better, how can I view
those
>fields,
>>too? Thanks in advance...
>
>Nobody knows the troubles I've seen trying to do the same thing. Characters
>that were intended to be binary, but are now represented as ASCII
characters,
>can take on any value and thus signal all sorts of unintended behaviors.
The
>best and easiest thing to do is write a small program in something like
>Visual Basic to read your flat files as a series of substrings and print
them
>to a form, picture box or text box. You can either excise out the binary
>sections (which would be the easiest thing) or write conversion routines
and
>convert the values into ASCII representations of the numeric values (it's a
>bit more work, but it's not all that hard).
>
>Shy of doing this (or something similar), no simple editor is going to be
of
>any value. However, there is one other thing you might try that will get
you
>to the same point by doing essentially the same thing without having to
>resort to writing a program. A great number of PC-based spreadsheets allow
>you to define parsing fields so that you may read flat file-based data into
a
>spreadsheet from fixed-field formatted data (which is essentially what you
>have). Define your fields as (for example) field1:1-10; field2:18-24; etc.,
>skipping over the binary sections. When your file is subsequently read
>(imported) into the spreadsheet, each ASCII field will be read into a
>different column -- and they will all be perfectly aligned.
>
>I hope this helps Nobody.
>
>Wirt Atmar
>