Tony: Have you experienced the earlier MS mess of ignoring commas as answers? That's the basis of my frustration that before VB, there was no real good INPUT statement in the MS flavors of basic (GW, QB and for that matter VB). MS Basic has half a dozen INPUT-like statements but none work cleanly. VB has propertied text boxes but i've had to write my own over the years for GW & QB to accept commas and limit the length on screen inputs.
MS removing the comma from human use is just wrong. It could have been a tilde or pipe or any other CHAR GE 127. At least the tab in its human form is identical to the purpose as a delimiter. I've switched to CSV's when exporting to the popular Excel target as my earlier experiences with tabs had some issues when sending it through Wintegrate (which most of my clients have). my 1 cent ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Gravagno" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'U2 Users Discussion List'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 3:12 AM Subject: RE: using commas in a csv file output In the interest of fairness, the comments about brain surgeons and poor judgement (in this case) are mis-directed. First Excel can easily import TAB delimited data. Go to menu > Data > Import External Data > Import data, then use the wizard to specify the delimiter is a tab and not a comma. That process can easily be made into a macro. Second, the issue with commas and decimals can't be attributed to Excel vs MV. Excel processes and formats (renders) data. By passing pre-formatted data into the Excel you blur the line between business rules and user-interface, something that OO developers will tell you is a big no-no because it causes exactly the problems you experience here. The proper way to put numbers into Excel is to forget about all of the MV formatting and just import unformated data, then assign formatting to cells, columns, and rows as required. Third, related to the last note in any case, by wrapping text in quotes you are telling Excel that a piece of data is Text and not numeric. This may cause problems later if you try to do calculations or reformat the data as though it were numeric. There are many ways to automate processes like this. People tend to look at every Excel import function like a nail because the only tool they know about is the CSV hammer. Excel is a powerful tool and you should look beyond comma delimited text files for your import/export needs - or at least learn how to properly swing that hammer. Oops, 3 cents there. Tony Nebula R&D -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Johnson Sent: Monday, February 02, 2004 10:19 PM To: U2 Users Discussion List Subject: Re: using commas in a csv file output The reason quotes are needed in CSV is because some brain surgeon long ago decided that commas aren't human characters and that they should become value delimiters. Thus, CSV elements containing commas need the surrounding quotes. We MV people are thankful that our delimiters are far away from the human characters, 254 etc. Early MS basic allowed INPUT A,B and your answer contained a comma and their INPUT put it into the 2 variables. If your single answer to INPUT A was "Perth,SW", you got an 'extra ignored' and lost the SW. It's a shame that we must live within the poor judgement of these early designs. But they're out there. I have 2 utilities that i use extensively when building CSV's (rows & columns) from within Databasic when export/importing to a PC system. The first is called LINE.CSV and it converts LINE<1>, LINE<2> LINE<3> (a built variable representing one row) into a CSV row for appending to your eventual text file (OPENSEQ or emulator export). I have its opposite called CSV.LINE which will convert an invoming CSV row into LINE<1> etc paying attention to the commas. If anyone would like a copy email me off line. I'm probably going to publish them in Spectrum anyway. BTW, to answer the second question, to remove the pennies from an ICONV'd value you would use MD03. That's Zero Three , not Oh. The Zero indicates the displayed decimals and the 3 is the converted. Thus, MD3 is the same as MD33. Also, check to see if the comma contained in a number offends the numerical format of that cell. I don't think the comma contained is numeric, ie PRINT NUM("123,456") returns false and PRINT NUM(123,456) implies a second argument to the NUM function. you can't say X=123,456 and if you put quotes around it, it's not numeric. my 1 cent. ----- Original Message ----- From: Simon Adams To: U2 Users Discussion List Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 12:45 AM Subject: RE: using commas in a csv file output OK, I now get 10,000.00 but I would like to suppress the decimal places. This is my line of code : FLAT.LINE:='"':OCONV(PARTS.REC<8,W>,"MD3,"):'"' Any further advise, most appreciated. Cheers, Simon. Australia. -----Original Message----- From: Kevin King [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 3 February 2004 15:51 To: U2 Users Discussion List Subject: RE: using commas in a csv file output quote the entire data value. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Simon Adams Sent: Monday, February 02, 2004 9:44 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: using commas in a csv file output How can I force a comma in an outputted csv file ? I want to put commas in numbers eg: 10,000 but as the delimiter is a comma, it puts 10 in one column and then the 000 in the next column. How can I OCONV the output but keeping the number together ? Cheers, Simon. Australia. **************************************************************************** ********* This e-mail, including any attachments to it, may contain confidential and/or personal information. 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