> I'm using as_string() in Marc::Batch to get 650 fields and mash all the > subfields together so I can push them into a database. Works great, but > what I'd really like to do is have fields such as: > > "Health Services Canada." > > appear as > > "Health Services -- Canada."
Well, it's MARC::Field that is doing the as_string(). The dashes between the a, x, y and z is bringing me back to 1991 when I was working on the punctuation for the CardMaster Plus product for Follett Software. What I had to do back then was create a big table that summarized the AACR2 rules as best as possible. It was big mess, with certain punctuation coming before certain fields, and some after. For example, in your "Health Services -- Canada", the " -- " isn't after the _a subfield, but rather that it's before the _x. All that was in C, before object-oriented programming (at least in our shop), so these days we'd probably have a MARC::Field::650 subclass that overrides the as_string() method. That could get pretty hairy for all the potential tags running around, especially since 600 and 650 and a good many other 6xx tags would be similar. I'm open to ideas. xoa -- Andy Lester => [EMAIL PROTECTED] => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance
