Delimiters and MFF stage in Mainframe canvas

sankarsadasivan · Post by **sankarsadasivan** » Fri May 04, 2007 12:44 pm

I am developing mainframe jobs in DS 390.
I have a requirement to read an input file which has the format

1)Header - Data - Trailer
2) Data record delimited by ASCII 168

Q1: Since the record has multiple formats, I decided to use MFF Stage, but then it doesnt support delimited files, only fixed width files.
Wondering what stage can be used in my case...

Q2: Also how do I specify ASCII168 delimiter in the file stages.

Any ideas....

Thanks

ray.wurlod · Post by **ray.wurlod** » Fri May 04, 2007 4:01 pm

There's a Delimited Flat File stage. You can specify the delimiter as a three-digit decimal ASCII code or as a two digit hexadecimal ASCII code preceded by "&H". See page 6-5 of the Mainframe Job Developer's Guide for full information.

sankarsadasivan · Post by **sankarsadasivan** » Sat May 12, 2007 8:10 am

Thank you , Ray.

Delimited flat file stage , doesnt allow multiple formats - header, data and trailer records and MFF doesnt allow delimiters!!

Thanks for pointing out the documentation, I tried ASCII delimiter 168 in the delimiter column of the delimited flat file stage , it says its invalid ..
and gives the error message, we can use spl characters, ASCII three digit decimal code or hexa 2 digit with &h.. confusing!

Any ideas?

Much appreciated.

chulett · Post by **chulett** » Sat May 12, 2007 10:15 am

sankarsadasivan wrote:Thanks for pointing out the documentation, I tried ASCII delimiter 168 in the delimiter column of the delimited flat file stage , it says its invalid ..

So what exactly did you try? Hopefully not literally 'ASCII delimiter 168' but rather just 168 in the field, as long as that is the decimal value of your delimiter. Or is that number what it declared 'invalid'?

ray.wurlod · Post by **ray.wurlod** » Sat May 12, 2007 3:04 pm

According to the Mainframe Job Reference Guide (page 6-5) any three digit ASCII code value can be used for the delimiter (on the Format tab). You can also use &hA8 instead of 168.

If the Delimited Flat File stage won't allow 168 you probably need to read the entire row as a single VarChar (string) and parse it yourself using POSITION, CHARACTER_LENGTH and SUBSTRING functions. Which would be messy, to say the least. There is no FIELD function in mainframe jobs.