I am doing a compare of a attribute of a file to a table


the actual IF statement is

IF.IM.REC<114> = UPC THEN GOTO.NEXT.ITEM


The actual values are


IM.REC<114> = 72288108174

UPC = 00072288108174


the IF statement acts as though it is a MATCH

Any ideas? Brain totally fried today and not thinkingclearly

James Stoddard wrote:

Force a string comparison instead of numeric. Eg:

IF 'A':IM.REC<114> = 'A':UPC THEN GOTO.NEXT.ITEM

John

On Tue, 03 May 2005 21:07:10 GMT, "James Stoddard"
<wildcat66 (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> decreased the available storage
space of our news server by typing the following:

Why is there a leading period in the IM.REC variable and
no space between IF and that period?

IF.IM.REC<114> != IF IM.REC<114>

Numerically, the NUMBERS are the same!
If you treat them as strings by surrounding each with quotes, the
values do not equal. Test ....

:CT WEAVER FOOFOO

FOOFOO
001 REC114 = "72288108174"
002 UPC = "00072288108174"
003 IF REC114 = UPC THEN PRINT "SAME" ELSE PRINT "NOT.SAME"

:FOOFOO
NOT.SAME
:

Note: Without the surrounding quotes, it comes up SAME.

Another thing you could do is ALSO check the lengths of each value to
see if they are or are not identical.

Dave Weaver, Weaver Consulting

Hi
The rules for comparison as laid down in the original Pick are that a
numeric compare is always done first then an alpha compare when checking two
values in this manner.
In fact the original plan was to use EQ for alpha and = for numeric but this
got lost in the works very early on.
Regards
Peter McMurray
"Dave Weaver" <weaver22 (AT) pacbell (DOT) net> wrote

Sorry, Dave, but I think I have to disagree.

The br.compare mode always acts the same: first it tries to do a command
called a POPN to pop a number off the stack. If that succeeds, it does a
numeric compare and, in this case, the two "strings" are numerically
equivalent. If that fails, then it does a POPS to pop a string and does a
string compare.

You have to append a non-numeric character of some sort either at the
beginning or end of the string to force a string compare.

Mark Brown


"Dave Weaver" <weaver22 (AT) pacbell (DOT) net> wrote

Mark Brown wrote:
Mark,

Say what? You disagree with my test code right in front of you?
Whether you quote the numbers or prepend or append an alpha character
to the numbers treats the numbers as a string. It is just a matter of
"programmer's preference". There are a number of ways to skin this cat!

But, the original problem was one of comparing NUMERIC data!
123 = 0000000123

Hint: Anytime you do a NUMERIC operation (compare, add, subtract,
multiply, divide) the leading zeros are stripped! I once saw code a
programmer had written consisting of about 15 lines of code to remove
the leading zeros! The proper (and easy) way is to just add zero to the
number --- walla, the leading zeros are gone!
A = 00000456
A = A + 0
PRINT A
result: 456

Dave Weaver, Weaver Consulting

I tried Mr. Weaver's little foofoo progam and the program operates as
displayed.

This surpised me just a little. I've always added an 'A' to the start of
numbers for these special comparisons.

What Dave doesn't hint at in his code is how to get the data read in from
disk to act like a string.

Any hints Dave?

Regards,

Dale

"Mark Brown" <mbrown (AT) drexelmgt (DOT) com> wrote

I don't think there is anything one can do to "get the data read in
from disk to act like a string".
Data/Datum 0000012345 stored that way on disk will come in as
0000012345 with all "READ" statements. That is why one must be careful
to not store leading-zeroed numbers unless they are absolutely
necessary for some purpose.

Once the data are (or datum is) read from disk, then the programmer may
have to fuss with the numeric data a bit, just as suggested above:
a. Prepend an alpha character to the number.
b. Append an alpha character to the number.
c. Surround the number with quotes (single or double quotes both work).

Be careful! If you are going to use the number(s) for subsequent
mathematical operations (like develop totals, etc.), the numbers better
be numbers (numeric) or they will blow out the math operation(s)!

Dave Weaver, Weaver Consulting

"Dave Weaver" <weaver22 (AT) pacbell (DOT) net> wrote in
news:1115161335.540048.272030 (AT) o13g2000cwo (DOT) googlegroups.com:

Not true. "123" is identical to 123, which is identical to "00123",
which is identical to 00123.

Not true. In the original post, the comparison was an "attribute in a
file to a table". Numeric isn't mentioned and shouldn't be assumed.

And if you encounter non-numeric data, kablooie.

Regards,
Joe