Progress
Programming
Handbook


Converting Non-standard Input Files

The input files used in the previous examples contained data that was in a very specific format:

p-datf1.d
90 "Wind Chill Hockey" BBB 
91 "Low Key Checkers"  DKP 
92 "Bing’s Ping Pong"  SLS 

When using a data file as an input source, Progress, by default, expects that file to conform to the following standards:

What if you need to deal with an input file that does not conform to these standards? For example, you might have a file in which each field is on a separate line; or where fields are separated by commas instead of spaces; or where the fields have no special delimiters, but appear at specific column locations.

Progress provides two strategies for dealing with such files:

Which method you choose depends on your particular circumstances. For example:

The following section explains how to use QUOTER. For more information on using the IMPORT statement, see the "Importing and Exporting Data" section.


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