Reading HL7 messages into Cloverleaf

[Graham Hartley]

I am new to Cloverleaf and particularly HL7.  I am trying to work out what the special character is that separates the different message segments in a HL7 message and more specifically how to generate this using the keyboard.  I.e. in a QRY^A19 message you must place a special character between the MSH and QRY segment otherwise the message cannot be read in Cloverleaf.  I thought this was a carriage return but this doesn

Topic

[Jim Kosloskey]

Graham,

To make sure of what is in the file I use a provided command line utility called hcihd.

I usually pipe the output of hcihd to less (unix).

This will give you a hex dump and you can verify that there is a x0d between segments.

If there is a x0d between segments and the file looks fine otherwise, what tool in Cloverleaf(R) are you using to read the file and what is it you are experiencing?

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

[Graham Hartley]

Thank you very much for your response.  I have tried using the hcihd command and as you stated x0d does separate each segment.  What I would like to know then is how can I add this character to other HL7 messages?  I have been using notepad and getting my example messages from various HL7 documentation.  The problem is that when I copy them from the document the 0xd is not copied.  This results in an error when I try and send the message using the resend (New Line terminated) functionality in Network Monitor.  Once I have managed to get this to work I will do further testing using the application TCPIP Test.  Your help is much appreciated

[Jim Kosloskey]

Graham,

I would suggest using an editor that allows editing in hex.

I use both Ultra-Edit (which has a minimal charge) and PsPad (which I believe is free.

However, if the files are coming to you in an improper format you need to get the sender to correct that.

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

[Max Drown (Infor)]

I use vi (or gVim for Windows) for this sort of thing.

The HL7 segment delimters are carriage returns (r, x0d, and in vi they appear is ^M).

-- Max Drown (Infor)

[Sergey Sevastyanov]

Another hex editor to look at – Hex Editor Neo at <a href="http://www.hhdsoftware.com/Products/home/hex-editor-free.html&#8221; class=”bbcode_url”>http://www.hhdsoftware.com/Products/home/hex-editor-free.html

They have free version

[David Harrison]

Graham,

HL7 segments are separated with the hex 0d character but messages are separated with the hex 0a character.

If I have an HL7 test message I want to put through Cloverleaf, I use the PSPad editor http://www.pspad.com/en/download.php  as follows:

[David Barr]

David Harrison wrote:

There may be a better way, and I would be interested to hear if there is, but it works for me.

How about this:

Code:

perl -pe ‘s/rMSH/rnMSH/g; END { print “n”;}’ infile.msg > outfile.msg

[David Harrison]

That’s great! It works on unix with MAC formatted files.

Not being a Perly person, how could this be modified for unix or DOS formatted files?

Also, what would be the syntax on Windows?

Thanks,

Dave

[David Barr]

As far as I know, the same syntax would work on Windows.  I usually use the Cygwin version of Perl when I’m using Windows.

You’re calling the files “Mac formatted”, which I wouldn’t really agree with.  They just happen to have CR characters but no NL characters which corresponds to Mac formatted text files.  The reason that the CR’s are there is because that’s the standard character used by HL7.  You then appear to conclude from this that there would be a Unix or DOS equivalent of this format, which there isn’t.  If you’ve got a file that is using NL or CR-NL to separate segments, it’s not following the HL7 standard.  If you commonly see this type of file, I’m curious where you’re getting it from.

In case you really do have to deal with files in this format, there is a Perl command that you could use for translation from this format.  Something like perl -ne ‘chomp; (($. > 1 && /^MSH/) && print “n”; print “$_r”; END { print “n”; }’.

[Chris Williams]

David,

Where you see those kinds of files is when someone has FTPd the file between different operating systems as ASCII rather than BINARY, an all too common mistake.

Also, you need to ask whether this is a SMAT msg file, a new-line formatted file, or someother format.

[Author]

Replies