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Midrange Guru - Tech Tips
OS/400 Edition
Volume 2, Number 22 - March 22, 2002

Client Access Transfers Linefeed-Terminated Data

Hey, Ted:

Here is some information regarding an interesting situation I had with Client Access File Transfer. For some time, we had been receiving a file from a bank and uploading it to the AS/400 with Client Access. We changed banks, and were surprised when the first file they sent us used only a linefeed character to delimit records. We wasted a lot of time trying to get the bank to end records with the usual carriage-return linefeed combination, and we finally determined that their software was not flexible enough to accommodate our request.

IBM told me that the CR/LF was a requirement for Client Access file transfer, and they suggested using an (unsupported) utility program from another company that could add the CR character to each record. This approach seemed to have its own drawbacks, so I started playing with Client Access file transfer. I discovered that I could successfully upload the file to the AS/400 by specifying the source file as tab-delimited text, even though there were no tab characters in the bank's file. I called IBM tech support to tell them of my discovery. They told me the reason the transfer worked was that there was a 'bug' in the file transfer program. They planned to fix the bug in a future release.

About a week later IBM tech support called me again to tell me Client Access has been capable of uploading LF-delimited records as tab-delimited files since its inception. I was told they have decided to not fix the bug, but change their documentation to reflect what I had discovered by accident.

I got a real kick out of this one, and I thought you might too.

-- Jeff

Thanks, Jeff. I tried this out and it worked for me too. I was able to upload a file of linefeed-delimited records to both a source physical file member (without an FDF file-description file) and to a data file using an FDF file.

I'll take your word for IBM's intentions to support officially this file-transfer behavior, but I can't advise anyone to rely on it until IBM makes an announcement.

-- Ted
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