Specifying Record Format
Contents
Record formats may be either comma-quote delimited (CQD) or fixed length.
CQD - All fields in each record must be separated by commas, and character fields must be enclosed in double quote marks. If a line break occurs before all the fields are read in, then it is assumed that the remaining fields can be found on the following line/s. This format is commonly used for data exchange with spreadsheets, where each field corresponds to one cell in a row of the spreadsheet. e.g.
“John Smith”,”1 Jan 1972”,”12:13 pm”,85.6312,42.9832
Fixed Length - Each field in the record is a fixed user-specified length, so that the length of the full record is exactly equal to the sum of the length of each field in the record. Each record must be terminated by a line break. e.g.
”John Smith 01011972 1213P 85E38 42N59
If you choose this option then you must specify the length of each field individually so that the total record length is matched exactly. You can use “Filler” fields if there are items in the record that are not relevant to the data exchange.