How to truncate spaces in a CSV PS file using JCL/COBOL

superman · New User Joined: 28 Mar 2011 Posts: 12 Location: india

Hello team,

I have a CSV file in which certain fields are populated as SPACES.
The seperator here is ';'----> semicolon

Name;Age;Address
John;25;Chicago
Mike;27;Denver
Abby;18;Ohio

In this file I populate the field values using an external DB2 call.
However sometimes my datbase contains spaces for a lot of fields.
Hence, the resultant file looks like this:

Name;Age;Place;.........
John; ;Chicago;........
;27;Denver;.......
Abby;18; ;........

Is there any way to truncate the unnecessary spaces in betwen the seperator ';' and generate the file as follows:

Name;Age;Place;.........
John;;Chicago;........
;27;Denver;.......
Abby;18;;........

Kindly help.

prino · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 8:29 pm

DB2 cannot directly generate CSV files, so why don't you do it in the program that actually retrieves the data from DB2 and writes out the CSV file?

Or am I too stupid to understand such a trivial problem?

superman · New User Joined: 28 Mar 2011 Posts: 12 Location: india

Yes I am using a COBOL program for this.It fetches the values from DB2 table then writes it into a file.

Akatsukami · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 8:47 pm

So, then, as Mr. Prins suggests you will want to modify that program, won't you?

superman · New User Joined: 28 Mar 2011 Posts: 12 Location: india

Yes I know I can modify the cobol program use INSPECT clause etc fro truncating the spaces etc. but can this be doen with SORT /utility?

Akatsukami · Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 9:58 pm

Ah, so you deliberately misstated the requirement in your thread title. Do you have any notion of what utilities are available at your site?

superman · New User Joined: 28 Mar 2011 Posts: 12 Location: india

We tried using the following:

OPTION COPY
INREC OVERLAY=(1:1,4502,SQZ=(SHIFT=LEFT,MID=C' '),
1:1,4502,TRAN=LTOU)

However we don't want to loose the any spaces between the data(JOHN**MILLER must remain as it is and not become JOHN*MILLER) i.e we just need to truncate spaces between seperators(;) for our csv file.