Null characters in text file

If you create a file that has data from position 1 to 5, a null character at position 6, and then data from position 7 to 20, what you have actually created is a file that has data from position 1 to 19, with no way to indicate that someone wanted nothing at position 6.

You cannot have nulls in a fixed with file — only spaces. So thats the way they are giving the data with some null characters in the file. Do you have any tool that will let you inspect the file to verify that the null characters are actually there? If I create a txt file with the null ASCII character 0 , there is no null character in the file, even if I open the file using a binary tool.

If they are sending you a file with implied nulls in unknown locations, there is no way for you to be able to interpret. Is there any way you can get them to change their file format? There are a number of ways such a file may be built. A null is simply a character whose bits are all in the off status. Okay, I will back-pedal a little bit.

And try to explain that process to a functional user that is trying to interpret data on an input file. I did not replicate that typo on purpose. I had no intention of being rude! So I think its like some unwanted characters that are not readable. And using the tr command in linux works to replace the characters before processing the file using file layout.

No Account? Sign up. By signing in, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Already have an account? Sign in. By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. We have received your request and will respond promptly. Log In. All the Best Praveen Menon pcmin rediffmail. I had to resort to reading binary, replacing chr 0 with " ", rewriting a new file then reading the new file as ASCII.

I can not say what the FileSystenObject does with Chr 0. The difference may be that I read a specific number of characters rather than an entire line at a time. My problem had been always with Line Input. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework. The Tek-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action. Click Here to join Tek-Tips and talk with other members! Already a Member? Hi, We have an input datafile coming in from a different source.

When this file is being processed by the Unix code on a AIX machine, it give a different record count and fails reconciliation with the expected couts. In short the Binary Nulls are getting treated differently when we are doing a processing of file. The main thing change is when we redirect the data from the input data file to another temporary file to remove the last line, which is a control record.

In this process the file that gets created as a totally different record length as the binary nulls are being treated differently by the unix. Please advice. Join Date: Feb You will have to change the "binary nulls" to spaces Code :. But this means that we are modifying inpur data, which is really not possible. If a binary null has come in a number field position then it will throw an error at oracle level.

But if we replace the binary Nulls with space then it will throw an error for invalid data. And also if binary nulls is in a varchar field which is a unique constraint then space will be taken as a value and the wrong data will be entered. I dont think replacing them with the space is not a good idea. Please let me know if this approach is right. Do you foresee any negative consequence? Thx Arch. Shell Programming and Scripting. Outputting characters after a given string and reporting the characters in the row below --sed.

Remove first 2 characters and last two characters of each line. I apologize if this question has been answered else where or is too elementary. Basically I do not know all control characters that have a special meaning, for example,? Replace special characters with Escape characters? How are these two different? They both prevent output and error from being displayed.