Read Fixed width Flat file using TOS

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

I am trying to read a Fixed Width flat file using tFileInputPositional. However, there are a couple of things that needs to be ensured when the data is red from the source.
i. The trailing spaces for all fields needs to be trimmed.
ii. If the data present in the fields of the file consist only of '*' then we need to read the field data as ''. Whereas if the data consists of characters along with '*' then the data should be read as is. (eg:'****' or '***********' gets read as '' . But 'abc**erf*' gets read as 'abc**erf*')
Please suggest if there is any easier way  of getting this done rather than dealing with each source field individually in a tMap.

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Hi
For 1, there is a 'trim all column' box option in the advanced setting panel of tFileInputPositional component, this box is checked by default. 
For 2, I think you need to hard code to check and transform the data after reading it from the source file.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

As suggested I tried using the below expression for point 2:

StringHandling.LEN(StringHandling.EREPLACE(out1.row1,"*","")) > 0 ? Fout1.row1 : "" 

But this gives an error like java.util.regex.PatternSyntaxException: Dangling meta character '*' near index 2.

Please suggest whether its required to put escape characters with '*' like '\\*' to make it work.