"SPITZ, HOBART CTR DFAS" wrote: > My first reaction would have been to say definitely yes. I've always > found that behavior an unintuitive gotcha for which I could get burnt > without warning.
It's often useful when the output format should be adjusted for the input--putting a comment in the first available column after column 40, for instance. I can definitely see wanting to omit a whole structure from the output if there's no input for it. Maybe a keyword (NO/SKIP?) could control the behavior for both types, with a default of SKIP for unstructured and NOSKIP for structured fields as today, and a default value for the rest of the spec could be inserted before any input specification. For instance: ... | specs q blah f2 10 noskip w7 nw w8 skip m foo w5 nf | ... would pad the record out to column 10 only if f2 exists, and to member foo only if w8 exists, but write w7 and w5 and their separators unconditionally. ¬R
