Negative control numbers -- it is certainly not prohibited by the field type 
definition of that element.  Has anyone actually seen a case of a negative 
control number?  Can anyone come up with a plausible use case?  I would never 
fault any programmer for taking advantage of this simple assumption of the 
location of the segment terminator.


Howard
1 Peter 4:10





________________________________
From: Mike Rawlins <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Sent: Sun, June 26, 2011 9:20:53 PM
Subject: Re: [EDI-L] <OFF-TOPIC> A gift for the group

  
In regard to:

"The ISA segment is always 105 characters in length - fixed length, so 
you can get the EOS character by checking the 106th character in the EDI 
text string. "

I am thrilled at the pleasure of being the first to point out *this 
time* that this is not true.  As long time denizens of this list will 
remember, Jonathan Allen many years ago brought to our attention that 
the ISA might be 106 bytes with the segment terminator in the 107th 
byte, this due to the fact that the control number can be negative. True 
also that this almost never happens, but if you want a bullet proof 
completely compiant parser you'll need to accomodate this idiosyncracy.

Mike

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



------------------------------------

...
Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, 
<JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC>

Job postings are welcome, but for job postings or requests for work: <JOBS> IS 
REQUIRED in the subject line as a prefix.Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    [email protected] 
    [email protected]

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    [email protected]

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

Reply via email to