Reply To: Extreme newbie to X12

[Charlie Bursell]

Cloverleaf internally deals with messages not files.  The same rules apply as would apply to a file of HL7 messages.  If more than one per file, tell Cloverleaf or handle it in Tcl by splitting into messages.

The difference in X.12 messages is that the Headers (ISA/GS) and trailers (IEA/GE) elements must be stripped off prior to translation.  Translate should only deal with transaction (ST .. SE) elements.

If there are many transactions – I have seen thousands in a file – I prefer to use Tcl and split into individual transactions and process them that way rather than having the Xlate engine loop through them.  Seems faster that way.

FWIW, LF or CR can be used as legitimate element separtors although you usually see ~.

Don’t know if this answers your question but it depends on what you are trying to do.  Like in other areas of implementation there is no one size fits all

I guess that’s why you get paid the big bucks to figure it out  😉