Extracting the last record from a sequential file

SharathG · New User Joined: 23 Jan 2007 Posts: 12 Location: India

Hi All,

I need to extract the last record from a sequential file which contains some million records. I tried doing it using ICETOOL by skipping (count-1) records and it is working. I also tried TRAILER1 in DFSORT and it gave me the desired output.

But these methods scan all the million records to get the count of number of records and then extract the last record. What I want is a method by which we can extract the last record without scanning through the entire file? Please note that this is a Physical Sequential file.

Any ideas are welcome. Please get back to me in case of any queries.

expat · Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 4:37 pm

Unless you read the file, how else will you know when you have reached the last record ?

Ajay Baghel · Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 4:43 pm

Hi Sharath,

You can use Fileaid to read the file backwards. While copying, select option 1 (selection criteria). Here you can mention that you want to do backward processing. Also you can mention how many records you want to select(in your case 1) and you many records need to be searched.

Hope it clears.

-Ajay