Replace "~" with a space in RXE message

[Ross Stolle]

I am currently working on an HL7 pharmacy interface between 2 systems.  In the RXE, there is an ID field in RXE 7.1 and that’s the only thing in RXE 7.  However, I need this to be in RXE7.2.  The easy fix was to concatenate a “^” on the front of the field in a xlate.  That works great, but now the field has “~”‘s in it.  Within the xlate, can I do something to then replace the “~” with a space?

Thank you!

Topic

[Jim Kosloskey]

Ross,

The problem with concatenating a specific separator character (such as component separator in this case ^) is that, in the future, should the receiving system require a change to the separator character to be used (such as a $), the Xlate will not produce the required output without change to the Xlate.

I think it is better to simply COPY RXE-7.1 to RXE-7.2 and let the Xlate put the appropriate separator character in place. Currently it would be ^ but if the receiving system required a different separator (as defined in the MSH-1 and MSH-2) such as $, that would work without any change to the Xlate.

Now as to why you are getting the tilde ~, that is typically the repetition separator. That leads me to believe that your address path on the destination is indicating to place the data in the second repetition not the second component.

If you would like to discuss this of line, email me directly.

Thanks,

Jim Kosloskey

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

[Ross Stolle]

Just to verify, the “~” ‘s are coming across from my sending software due to line-feeds.  I have messaged them and told them that they need to change these since they should not be sending any HL7 delimiters in their messages.

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