What's Up, DOCumentation? 1998 # 1

Directory Navigation

The navigation of directories in multiplatform environments is tricky. For UNIX connections, you can now specify any accessible directory as your default login directory.

Instead of downloading an entire directory, you can navigate directly to MPE directories by specifying a group or directory in the File Open dialog box.

For both UNIX and MPE, you can now use wildcards to display a subset of files in the directory listing.

The problem with getting a directory listing from MPE/iX 4.0 has been fixed. Directory listings with a huge number of files no longer fail.

And There's More

Please contact us (1-888-ROBELLE or support@robelle.com) if you would like to receive the latest version.

[Ken Robertson]

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Improving Restore's Default

Restore, by default, changes the creation date, modification date, last access date, and the state change date of files to whatever the date is when it is restored. In most cases, this is not what you want. Here is a UDC that changes this default:

RESTORE

    anyparm parms=;;create
    comment Changes RESTORE's default to OLDATE.
    if pos("NEWDATE",ups('!parms'))=0 then
     RESTORE !parms;OLDDATE
    else
     RESTORE !parms
    endif

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Double-Spacing

Qedit

When you use the List command on a file, you can use the $DBL option:

    "/listq $dbl myfile lp"

Suprtool

If you want your output for List Standard to be double-spaced, one sneaky but effective way to do this is to append a string of blanks to the extracted fields. This forces each record to wrap around to a second line:

    >extract field1\field9
    >extract "              "

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Suprtool and Year 2000

We discuss this issue at some length in the support area of our Web site, but here is a summary:

1. If your date fields include the century component and the date is in a collating date format (year first, then month, then day, e.g., CCYYMMDD), then Suprtool will continue to sort, select, and output these dates correctly. In short, if your data is year-2000 compliant, then so is Suprtool. If the date includes the century, but is not in a collating format (e.g., DDMMCCYY, or MMDDCCYY), then Suprtool will continue to select records equal to a date, but will continue to refuse to do range selection (<, <=, >, and >=) against these date fields because the numeric value of these dates will not collate into date sequence. In all cases, Suprtool sorts and selects dates according to their numeric value.

2. If your date fields do not include a century (e.g., YYMMDD), then Suprtool will not deliver logically consistent data after 1999. This is because the numeric value of YYMMDD no longer collates into date sequence for dates beyond December 31, 1999. In other words, January 1, 2000 is represented by a numeric value of 000101 in YYMMDD format, which collates before any date in the 20th century (19XX).

Suprtool's date functions ($date and $today) are a short-hand method of generating a numeric constant. For example, the following date selection:

    > item invoice-date,date,YYMMDD
    > if invoice-date < $today

    > if invoice-date < 980401   {on 1 April 1998}

    > if invoice-date < 000101   {on 1 January 2000}

1. Change the date storage format in all datasets and data files by including the century so that you can use the following Item command:

       > item invoice-date,date,CCYYMMDD
   

2. Perform the above step every time date selection is required by adding a Suprtool pre-pass that adds the century component to the dates and creates a year-2000 compliant workfile that can then be used for date selection on CCYYMMDD format dates.

In Suprtool 4.0 we introduced a new configuration option, Set Date Cutoff nn, which has caused some confusion among our users. This setting only influences the interpretation of dates specified in Suprtool commands. For example:

    > set date cutoff 50
    > item invoice-date,date,CCYYMMDD
    > if invoice-date = $date(60/12/25)

    > if invoice-date = $date(40/12/25)

Set Date Cutoff only influences the assumed century when calculating a constant during the parsing of the $date function. It does no conversion of the data records it reads.

More Error Checking

In Suprtool 4.0.11, we also added a check to issue an error when a date function generates a date constant in the next century if the date does not have a century component and the If command uses range selection. This set of conditions is considered an error because the date constant will rarely select all the desired records.

    > item invoice-date,date,yymmdd
    > if invoice-date < $date(*+3/*/*)
    Error: Cannot use a date beyond 1999 for this format

Hopefully this clarifies some of the issues around Suprtool and year-2000 compliance. As always, feel free to call 1-888-ROBELLE if you have questions.

[Hans Hendriks]

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Using MPEX and Qedit for Year 2000 Changes

Because the length of the data item was not changed, the offset of subsequent fields will not be affected. As a result, only the Item commands need to be changed. If the user has both MPEX and Qedit, a single MPEX command can change each modified field in all the user's Job files:

    %qedit @.job,change "date,yymmdd"(u)"date,ccyymmdd" "trx-date" (u)

Of course if all date fields were expanded, the trx-date qualifier could be replaced with an at sign (@) in the example above.

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Need Your Own Manual?

1. The annual update package includes a printed manual, which has a diskette with the WinHelp version of the manual. Use the diskette to run the Setup program that installs the WinHelp file on your PC.

2. If another user, who shall remain nameless, has already lost the diskette, the same files are available in the Whelp group of the Robelle account on systems where our products have been installed (on HP-UX systems, they are in the /usr/robelle/winhelp directory). Run the program (Qedit or Suprtool), enter "help install" at the prompt, and follow the instructions to download and install the WinHelp files on your PC.

3. If the latest version of the software has not been installed on your system, you can download the WinHelp files from our Web site.

4. To get a paper copy of the manual, you have 3 choices:
   
   • For US$20 you can buy a printed copy of the latest version from us. Call 1-888-ROBELLE.
   • For US$10 you can buy a manual of a previous version from our remaining stock.
   • To print a free copy of an MPE manual, simply run the Printdoc.Pub.Robelle program and select the manual you need from the program menu.

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How Are We Doing?

What's Up, DOCumentation? Survey

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Please fax your response to Robelle at 1-604-582-1799 or e-mail it to support@robelle.com. Thank you for your feedback.

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