Delimiting Explained
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Data is often stored in fixed field format. For
example, the First Name field
may allow
up to 20 characters. The first name "John" would be followed
by 16 spaces to fill it out
to the length of 20. This method causes all First
Names, Address, Cities etc. to begin in
a certain position within each record.
An application using this data can "grab" the first
20 characters of
the record as the "First Name" field, then grab the next character as
the
"Middle Initial" field, then 30 characters for the "Last
Name" field and so on.
Delimiting is a means of file compression. Data stored in fixed length fields
contains
many spaces. Removing these spaces makes the file significantly
smaller. Delimiting
basically removes the trailing spaces from each field and
replaces them with a delimiting
character such as a comma, tab or pipe symbol.
In order for the program reading in the
delimited file to know where each new
field begins a delimiting character is placed
between fields. The delimiting
character is normally meant to be a character that would
not typically be part
of the data within each field. When the application scans the file, it
knows
when it encounters the delimiting character that a new field has begun. Since
commas are often part on the data (123 main St., Suite 100) quotes are often
used to
"encapsulate" each field ("123 Main St., Suite
100"). This way, the scanning application
knows that the comma between the
encapsulators is part of the data and not a new field
beginning.
Any character can be used to delimit a file, however most applications which
import
delimited files look for commas, tabs or pipe characters.
We can delimit your file using any character
you request.
Comma-quote delimited:
"123 Main Street","My
City","CA","99999"
Comma delimited:
123 Main Street,My City,CA,99999
Tab delimited: (* represents the tab character)
123 Main Street*My City*CA*99999
Pipe delimited:
123 Main Street|My City|CA|99999
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