ICETOOL Question Concerning Sort Order

cpuhawg · Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2008 11:52 pm

If you mod records to a file using ICETOOL, is there anyway to have ICETOOL perform the SORT of all records to the Mod'ed file as opposed to sorting the records prior to Mod'ing them (which then requires an additional step to get the whole file sorted?

Frank Yaeger · Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2008 12:37 am

Sorry, I'm not following you. Can you show me an example of what it is you want to do.

cpuhawg · Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2008 12:49 am

You have records on an OUTFILE file in sort order, say 1,20,CH,A.

Arun Raj · Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2008 12:52 am

How about concatenating both the files and then applying the above sort?

cpuhawg · Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2008 1:02 am

Thank you for your suggestion arcvns, but when you are using a combination of SORT, SPLICE, and SELECT statements in ICETOOL, you can't concatenate a file that has not yet been created in the single ICETOOL job step.

Frank Yaeger · Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2008 2:01 am

I still don't really understand the big picture of what you're trying to do.

If you MOD records onto a data set with existing records, the MODed records appear AFTER the existing records. That's the way MOD works. MOD isn't a DFSORT/ICETOOL function - its an operating system function. There's nothing you can do that will magically allow the MODed records to be sorted with the existing records.

MERGE, or SORT with concatenation, would be the two ways to create an output file with sorted records from different files.

dick scherrer · Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2008 8:46 am

Hello,

FWIW - the process may run much faster and use less sytem resources if the new records are created in a separate file rather than MODing them onto the first file.

When the process finishes creating these new records, they could be merged with the "first" file creating a new file with all of the records in the desired sequence.