Any ideas for handling inbound files with spaces in the name

[Steve Williamson]

I’m just starting with CL and tcl so please bear with me.

I’m creating a site where the user will prepare files using Windows based applications, then FTP the files from Windows to a folder on the AIX box where we’re running CL 5.4.

There I have an Inbound thread using the fileset-local protocol with a TPS defined for the Directory Parse, then a Raw Route using another TPS to read the inbound message and replace it with the properly formatted outbound message.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to bypass an inbound file if the user FTPs a file with embedded spaces in the file name?

If the file is named ‘file name.txt’ then the message passed to the directory parse TPS has the value of ‘file name.txt’ then the engine tries to process a file named ‘file’ and another named ‘name.txt’ of course neither of these exist.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Steve

Topic

[Jim Kosloskey]

Steve,

Just a stab here but maybe if you take the directory list at the directory parse UPoC and surround the file name with single quotes before returning to Cloverleaf(R) it might work (I seem to recall in UNIX you need to wap single quotes – or maybe it is double quotes around file names with embedded spaces).

Jim Kosloskey

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[Steve Williamson]

Thanks Jim,

The problem really stems from the fact that the user may put multiple files in the folder all at once. Some may not have spaces but some may, you know how end-users are. 😯

If I could count on the file list only having one file I could regsub out the spaces but since I may end up with a file list like

‘my file.txt my_other_file.txt’ due to lists being space delimited when I try parse the list I end up with invalid file names and really no fool proof way of preventing it or telling if the space is really the end of the file name or embedded in the file name.

I may end up giving the user an FTP script to use that will only put files with proper names on the server.

Steve

[Charlie Bursell]

Won’t work Jim.  If you put in a file name like “THIS IS FILE A.TXT”  You will get an error from the fileset driver like:

[fset:read:ERR /0:    inbound_1:08/13/2007 18:12:21] Cannot open INPUT/THIS for reading: No such file or directory

I would suggest another way.  IF I had to deal with this I would do it via a UPoC driver.  Just to preclude any errors before I read the files I would do something like:

      set dir

      foreach fn [glob -nocomplain [file join $dir *] {

              set newfn [string map

$fn]

              file rename $fn $newfn

      }

Then simply raed and process any files found.

[Steve Williamson]

Thanks Charlie, that did the trick.

Steve

[Jim Kosloskey]

Since I have never run into the situation described, I decided to do some investigation.

This much I have discovered:

the directory parse UPoC is supposed to supply a list of file names which have been found in the directory to which the Fileset protocol is pointed

Since Tcl is the extension language we are supposed to use at this UPoC, one would expect the list to be a true Tcl type list such that if we have two files in the directory in question named (the quotes are just for delineation purposes they do not actually exist):

‘filename_no_space’

‘filename with space’

I think we would expect to see the following (if we echo the list in the log):

filename_no_space {filename with space}.

Thus we could get exactly two elements from the list.

However (and this is Cloverleaf(R) 5.2), when I have the above situation what I get is:

filename_no_space filename with space

The above when treated as a list has 4 elements and more importantly will not give correct results.

Have I done something wrong or is Cloverleaf(R) not providing a proper list at this UPoC?

Jim Kosloskey

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[Charlie Bursell]

Sorry Jim.  The engine was written for Unix which does not allow spaces in file names.  See my response to this same subject.

Perhaps you could contact Support and have them write an enhancement request .  But as it now stands fileset/local does not handle file names with spaces

[Jim Kosloskey]

Charlie,

I read you previous post but I thought the issue was not with the list being produced by the Directory Parse UPoC (and probable the File Deletion UPoC as well) but rather with the actual I/O routine.

Now that I see that is an issue, I will contact support. Frankly I think this should work properly.

In my mind, this should probably have been resolved once Cloverleaf(R) was ported to Windows and Windows began supporting file names with spaces (was that Win/95?).

In any case, I recall being able to define file names with imbedded spaces in UNIX at least 11 years ago when I was consulting on CA-Unicenter. It caused issues but it could be done. So maybe Cloverleaf(R) should have supported file names with spaces from the beginning.

In any case, that was then and this is now.

Thanks for verifying that I am not totally insane.

Jim Kosloskey

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[James Cobane]

This is kind of interesting, since I can create a file (on AIX) with spaces in the name, simply by enclosing it with double-quotes; i.e.

touch “my file name has spaces.txt”

I can then edit it with vi the same way –

vi “my file name has spaces.txt”

It seems like the engine should be able to handle it.

Jim Cobane

Henry Ford Health

[Jim Kosloskey]

All,

I have reported this situation to Support and have asked that it be treated as a bug not an enhancement.

I have also suggested that the correction be made available to all 5.x customers rather than just be corrected in the current and/or next release.

Jim Kosloskey

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[Dianna Braden]

Having a issue with fileset:local erroring when picking up files with spaces in the name.

I have read the suggestion on upoc driver – but not sure how that can help reading a directory with files coming into that directory at anytime.

Can someone explain?

Or example of how to handle spaces in maybe a dirparse tcl

I am trying different things

[Author]

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