Progress
Language Reference
EXPORT Statement
Converts data to a standard character format and displays it to the current output destination (except when the current output destination is the screen) or to a named output stream. You can use data exported to a file in standard format as input to other Progress procedures.
SYNTAX
STREAM stream
The name of a stream. If you do not name a stream, Progress uses the unnamed stream. See the DEFINE STREAM Statement reference entry in this book and the chapter on alternate I/O sources in the Progress Programming Handbook for more information on streams.
DELIMITER character
The character to use as a delimiter between field values. The character parameter must be a quoted single character. The default is a space character.
expression . . .
One or more expressions that you want to convert into standard character format for display to an output destination.
record
The name of the record buffer with fields that you want to convert into the standard character format to display to an output destination.
To use EXPORT with a record in a table name used in multiple databases, you must qualify the record’s table name with the database name. See the Record Phrase reference entry for more information.
EXCEPT field . . .
Progress exports all fields except those fields listed in the EXCEPT phrase.
memptr
A variable of data type MEMPTR that contains the exported text. The EXPORT statement may contain a MEMPTR in its field list as long as it is the only field in the list.
EXAMPLESThis procedure converts the data in the customer table into standard character format and sends that data to the customer.d file.
The next procedure shows how each EXPORT statement creates one line of data. That is, fields are not wrapped onto several lines.
That procedure creates an text file, custdump, with one line for each customer. This is a typical line of output.
Use the DELIMITER option to specify a character other than a space to separate fields in the output file. For example, the following procedure uses a semicolon.
This is a typical line of output from this code.
The following example displays using a MEMPTR to EXPORT mixed character and binary data:
NOTES
- EXPORT must follow an OUTPUT TO statement. Other procedures can use the exported data as input by reading the file with INSERT, PROMPT-FOR, SET, UPDATE or IMPORT statements, naming one field or variable to correspond to each data element.
- The data is in a standard format to be read back into Progress. All character fields are enclosed in quotes (
""
) and quotes contained in the data you are exporting are replaced by two quotes (""
). A single space separates one field from the next. An unknown value is displayed as an unquoted question mark (?).- There are no trailing blanks, leading zeros, or formatting characters (for example, dollar signs) in the data.
- Progress exports logical fields as the value YES or NO.
- A Format phrase with an EXPORT statement is ignored.
- If you use a single qualified identifier with the EXPORT statement, the Compiler first interprets the reference as dbname.tablename. If the Compiler cannot resolve the reference as dbname.tablename, it tries to resolve it as tablename.fieldname.
- When exporting fields, you must use table names that are different from field names to avoid ambiguous references. See the Record Phrase reference entry for more information.
- When exporting RECID fields, you must explicitly state the RECID field name in the EXPORT statement.
- When exporting ROWID variables or fields in a work table, you must convert the ROWID variable or field to a character string using the STRING function.
- If you use the DELIMITER option of the EXPORT statement to specify a delimiter other than a space character, you must specify the same delimiter character in a subsequent IMPORT statement that loads the data.
- EXPORT is sensitive to the Date format (-d), Century (-yy), and European numeric (-E) startup parameters. When loading data with the IMPORT statement, use the same settings that you used with the EXPORT statement.
- In the MEMPTR version of the EXPORT statement, the MEMPTR’s size will determine how much is written to the file. If the size of a MEMPTR is 100, and it only contains a string of length 10, the entire 100 bytes will still be written to the file. The PUT-BYTES statement and GET-BYTES function may be used to move portions of MEMPTRs to areas with varying sizes.You can read and write parts of a file by using MEMPTRs of varying sizes, and multiple EXPORT/IMPORT statements on the same file.
SEE ALSO
DEFINE STREAM Statement, DISPLAY Statement, IMPORT Statement, OUTPUT CLOSE Statement, OUTPUT TO Statement, PUT Statement, STRING Function
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