- This topic has 2 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 16 years, 7 months ago by
.
-
Topic
-
I am currently working on creating a new variant for McKesson Series HIS. They follow 2.2 for the most part but add fields and change field lengths. My question is this: If a field is defined as a name and is say 100 length, does Cloverleaf count the subfield separators as characters?
The reason i ask this is if i define a field as a String and I cannot define the subfields (since Cloverleaf doesn’t let me) it will count the separator as part of the field length. But since defining a field as a Name, Cloverleaf knows the subfield breakdown already.
-
Replies
-
-
well, i did some testing of my own and here is what i came up with. I had a PN (person name) field defined as 48 long. i put the following into a test message and ran it through the testing tool.
|aaaaaaaaaa^bbbbbbbbbb^cccccccccc^dddddddddd^eeeeeeeeee^ffffffffff|
it ended up returning
|aaaaaaaaaa^bbbbbbbbbb^cccccccccc^dddddddddd^eeeeeeeeee^ffff|
ie, 44 characters for info, and 4 characters for subfield dividers, totaling 48.
so, in terms of official HL7 standards, if a field is defined as 48 length, does that not mean 48 characters worth of actual text not counting the subfield separators?
-
Darren, The field length specified for HL/7 (the standard and in Cloverleaf(R) is to include separator characters.
In other words, as you noticed, if you have 4 component separators you have 4 less characters for actual data.
Jim Kosloskey
email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.
-
- The forum ‘Cloverleaf’ is closed to new topics and replies.
