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From: alan@ahmcs.uucp (Alan Mintz)
Newsgroups: comp.databases,comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: foxbase/dbase
Message-ID: <210@ahmcs.uucp>
Date: 22 Jun 91 00:48:47 GMT
References: <1991Jun19.152025.14890@ncsu.edu> <1991Jun19.184113.2436@agate.berkeley.edu>
Followup-To: comp.databases
Organization: Micro-Quick Systems, Inc.
Lines: 62

In article <1991Jun19.184113.2436@agate.berkeley.edu>, steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield;232HMB;3-6292;;MF62) writes:
> In article <1991Jun19.152025.14890@ncsu.edu> dcc@ccvr1.ncsu.edu (Daniel Carr) writes:
> #>
> #>in a previous post i said:
> #>
> #>   i'm trying to set up a database so that we don't have to use foxbase
> #>   mac's report generator.  i would like to use MS Word's Print Merge
> #>   feature, but i can't seem to get output from the database to be in a
> #>   file that Word expects (i.e. a line with the field names, separated by
> #>   tabs, and then each line being a record, with each field separated by
> #>   tabs. i can do one or the other, but not both in the same file.
> #>   
> #>   if you know anyone doing this, please ask them to give me pointers.  i'm
> #>   about it give up.
> 
> You might try
> 
> COPY TO FILENAME SDF
> 
> Standard data format (SDF) has text inside double
> quote marks, fields separated by commas, and a new line
> for each record. Most word processors can read it in.
> If you have to use a tab, you should be able to convert,
> though you may have commas in your data. You can substitute
> "," with "tab" in your word processor.
> 
> I generate data for WriteNow with SDF.

Actually, SDF generates non-delimited, fixed-length records, like:

<field_value1><field_value2><field_value3>
<field_value1><field_value2><field_value3>
<field_value1><field_value2><field_value3>
.
.
.

COPY TO blah DELIMITED generates the quoted, comma separated records. You
can use DELIMITED WITH x, where x is a character to use instead of the ""s.
If there are no ~ chars in your data, you could use:

. use dbf_name
. copy to dbf_name.txt delim with ~

This will generate a file that looks like:

~<field1_value>~,~<field2_value>~,~<field3_value>~
~<field1_value>~,~<field2_value>~,~<field3_value>~
~<field1_value>~,~<field2_value>~,~<field3_value>~
.
.
.

Under UNIX, you could then do:

cat dbf_name.txt | sed 's/~,~/	/g' | tr -d '~' > final.txt
			      ^^ - That's a tab

to turn the ~s into tabs. I presume there are tools on the Mac to accomplish
the same thing ?
-- 
< Alan H. Mintz  | alan@ahmcs.mq.com | ...!uunet!ahmcs!alan >