Quoted Field caused tcl parse error – Why??

[Tim Malaney]

Quotes in a field caused a TCL error. Once the quotes were removed the tcl ran successfully. Just looking for the cause/reason the quotes caused the error. Any suggestion how to prevent it in the futute are appreciated

Error

result  = ‘list element in quotes followed by “|W|4915” instead of space’

       errorInfo: ‘

list element in quotes followed by “|W|4915” instead of space

   while executing “lindex $segment 0”    (“foreach” body line 3)

Field  

PID|||99999999||ZZZZZ^ZZZZZ^ZZZZZ^^||99999999|F|PREFERS “PHYLLIS”|W|4915 SCHOEN R    

TCL    

   set PIDfields [split $segment $fieldSep]

   set PIDfields [lreplace $PIDfields 4 4 00000]

   set PIDfields [lreplace $PIDfields 2 3 [lindex $PIDfields 3] “”]

   set PIDAcct [lindex $PIDfields 18]

   regsub -all {T} $PIDAcct {} NewPIDAcct

   set PIDfields [lreplace $PIDfields 18 18 $NewPIDAcct]

   set segment [join $PIDfields $fieldSep]

   set segmentList [lreplace $segmentList $i $i $segment]

Thanks

Tim

Topic

[Levy Lazarre]

Tim,

It doesn’t show in the code fragment you submitted, but somewhere in your code, the following command was issued:

Code:

lindex $segment 0

In other words, you are applying a list command (lindex) to a string ($segment). I am not sure if this is intentional or simply an overlook.

Indeed, Tcl will allow you to treat a string as a list, but a space will be used as the default separator. The command failed on the PID segment because the separator suddenly changed from a space to a ‘|’ after the quoted element. You can easily test this at a Tcl prompt:

% set mystring {This “is” a test.}

% lindex $mystring 0   ===> This

but

% set mystring {This “is”|a test.}

% lindex $mystring 0  ==> error: list element in quotes followed by “|a” instead of space

To solve your problem, just replace the “lindex $segment 0” command with something else that achieves the intended result, perhaps a “split” command.

I hope this helps.

[Author]

Replies