If the input file contains not only text, but also binary and maybe
decimal packed fields,
you need an external description of the record format, which can be
interpreted by the conversion program
(if the program should be able to work with all file formats and not be
specific for a certain format).
Characters - must be decoded (EBCDIC to ASCII)
Binaries - must be converted (big endian - little endian, to be useful
on Windows etc.) or converted to readable format (character)
Decimal - does not exist on Windows, that is, it must be converted to
character (readable format);
if you do this, the field offsets will change. This means, that you need
two descriptions (original and edited form)
Hopefully the record lengths and offsets are fixed; no variable length
fields ...
I once wrote such a program for a customer of mine, in C, and I believe
there was a open source tool,
which I used as first start. But I didn't search it myself; my customer
gave it to me. But it didn't do the job;
I had to invest some hours (or days). It was written in ANSI C.
OTOH: if the program only must handle one certain record format,
a very simple Pascal program with a fixed record layout would do.
Kind regards
Bernd
Am 29.12.2020 um 20:01 schrieb R.S.:
The input file contain some text and some other fields. CR/LF,
RECFM=FB/VB and other "end of line" issues are not relevant.
The idea is to convert it to readable format, analyze content and
maybe modify very few words or characters. Modified file should be
converted back to original format. Obviously conversion forward and
backward should give file equal to the source file.
Modification can be understood like replacement "Radek" to "Gil.." or
"AAAA" to "BBBB". No change of length, just byte to byte replacement.
ISPF browse/edit with proper codepage is not an option due to some
reasons I don't want to describe, technically irrelevant.
FTP translation is also not an option. And I would like to avoid Rube
Goldberg process like ftp put with no translation and then get with
custom translation. However this method can be run in batch and it is
feasible even for large files.
No, I'm not writing any tool - I want to avoid it and simply save
people's time spent on the process.
Maybe I'm naive, but I believed such tools simply exist and are
available for download - like many, many other small and useful
utilities.
Regards
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