Character delimited templates

, ,
1

I have created an character delimited template that works with the exception of the delimited character.
I’m using a"|" pipe character but the output keeps placing an “*” in the data when I view it in the pipeline.

Is the “|” illegal and if so what are the legal characters to be used?

Any ideas on how to fix this?
Thanks.

2

i’m not positive, but i would try using double pipes ‘||’.

3

that was my first option before I posted.
should have mentioned it.

4

Chris,

I’m going from memory here, but I know I ran into the exact same problem last year. Unfortunately I don’t have the template or flow in front of me that had the problem.

For some reason the flow ignored the field delimiter value I specified in my template and used an asterisk instead. I believe I got around this by populating the ‘Field_Separator’ input variable in the ‘convertToString’ service.

I’m not positive, but I think this should work.

Regards,
Devan

5

Devan,

Your memory serves you well Young Jedi.
Must be another of those undocumented features.

Thanks.

6

One more thing.
Is there a way to get convertToString to place all the delimiters in the output even though some of the fields are empty.
The only work around I found was to pad all the fields.
Seems like an unnecessary waste of space. Bad design.

Thanks.

7

Chris,

I’m not seeing this same behavior. I’m using a record reference that has about 20 fields. I only populate about 15 of the fields and the other 5 show up as ‘null’ in the pipeline. After the converToString service is run all the delimiters show up in the proper positions.

Are your empty fields represented as ‘null’ values in the pipeline or are they just not in the pipeline at all? That is the only thing I can think of that may make a difference.

Regards,
Devan