Hex Characters from Data Entry

[GLS400]

Hi All:

I came accross this for the first time today and I'm hoping someone has some insight.

I have a note file where users can free-form key notes. One note contained a Hex '15' and a Hex '1A'. The x'1A' character looked like it should have been a ' character.

This program and DFU both blow up with un-displayable characters.

This is the only program that updates/writes to that file so these hex characters had to have been keyed in somehow.

I suspect a combination of keys with the alt key but I cannot duplicate the error.

Any Insight is welcome

Thanks
GLS

[Denny]

Re: Hex Characters from Data Entry

For the Client Access Emulator it is alt-x then enter a hex character of 4-9 or A-F followed by a second hex character 0-9 or A-F.

Note that this does not allow you to enter a value less that x'40' which would be a screen attribute.

I suspect that your user is copying from a non-CA screen and pasting into the emulator. I have seen some strange garbage were text was copied and pasted from a Outlook Email into a large text field in the CA emulator.

CA should not allow pasting < x'40' but it does.

[kitvb1]

Re: Hex Characters from Data Entry

System21 puts alpha chars into numeric fields by sticking the numeric fields into a data stracture and then writing it to file, and this on consolidated invoices! Same problem then as you with DFU and WRKQRY. One can change the contents using SQL though.

[GLS400]

Re: Hex Characters from Data Entry

Thank you Gentlemen.

I now suspect it was copy/pasted from an E-Mail. I cannot trace it as it was entered in July of 2007)

The fix used is as follows:

if %scan (x'15': PNND01) > *zeros;                       
   PNND01 = %replace(' ':pnnd01:%scan (x'15': PNND01):1);
   found = *on;                                          
endif; 
if %scan (x'1A': PNND01) > *zeros;                        
   PNND01 = %replace(' ':pnnd01:%scan (x'1A': PNND01):1); 
   found = *on;                                           
endif;  
.....      
if found=*on;      
   update noterec; 
   found=*off;     
endif;

Thanks again for all of your efforts
GLS