[Download-List] Character limit when using EVAL

Rotman, David rotmand at cedarville.edu
Fri Dec 13 10:30:06 EST 2013


Thanks, Marc, for sending me a description of the situation.  He has an
EVAL expression that returns more than 128 characters.

The problem here is that Download can process EVAL two different ways:

* if "COMPILE.EVAL=TRUE" is in the DOWNLOAD.CONFIG record in the VOC file
== A temporary virtual field is created, compiled, used, and then deleted.
* otherwise
== A SELECT statement is issued for each EVAL for each record.  Unidata
limits the size of text returned to 128 characters.

Some people (like Mark) do not have rights to modify dictionaries, so the
first approach is not workable.

I've done some experimenting with using a LIST statement instead of SELECT
to work around this problem.  My concern is the somewhat unpredictable
nature of the output from LIST (depending on the user's terminal settings
and other system defaults).

Perhaps members of the list could try a brief experiment and let me know
(offline) the results.  Try this statement (replacing "PERSON" with the
name of any Unidata file of your choice):
    LIST PERSON EVAL "'ABCD'" COL.HDG 'ZZ' HDR.SUPP ID.SUP VERTICAL SAMPLE 1
You should see output like this:
   ZZ   ABCD

   1 record listed
On my system, there are 3 spaces between the ZZ column heading and the ABCD
data.  Is that consistent?

Changing COL.HDG 'ZZ' to COL.HDG '' produces output with 3 leading spaces.

I know I could capture the output and do a TRIM or FIELD to avoid counting
spaces and get the data value, but that might prove problematic if there
were leading spaces in the data value.

Your comments are welcome.





David Rotman, Ph.D.
Associate Vice President for Technology
Chief Information Officer
Cedarville University
251 N. Main Street
Cedarville, OH 45314
rotmand at cedarville.edu
voice 937-766-7905
fax 937-766-8819



On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 11:47 AM, Bessler, Marc <mbessler at exeter.edu> wrote:

> I keep hitting a 128 character limit when using an EVAL and DOWNLOAD
> together. This includes the quote and delimiter characters. Is there a way
> to overcome this or did I miss something?
>
>
>
> Marc Bessler
> Technology Support Specialist
> Advancement Operations
> Office of Institutional Advancement
> Phillips Exeter Academy | 20 Main Street | Exeter, NH  03833
> 603-777-3367 | fax: 603-777-4382
> mbessler at exeter.edu
> http://www.exeter.edu/alumni <http://phillips.exeter.edu/>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> download-list mailing list
> download-list at cedarville.edu
> http://mail.cedarville.edu/mailman/listinfo/download-list
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.cedarville.edu/pipermail/download-list/attachments/20131213/9e6993e2/attachment.html>


More information about the download-list mailing list