Testing a field for NULL or BLANK in Xlate

[Manny Zachodin]

I am trying to use IF/ELSE in xlate based on a filed that is equal to NULL or BLANK, and getting an error

“[0:TEST] Bad value ‘””‘

[0:TEST] IF expression parse failed: Value references must yield exactly one datum

Error occurred at: ‘”‘

Tried If fieldname ne NULL, ‘ ‘, ” “…etc and always get the same error.

Topic

[Jim Kosloskey]

Manny,

Have you tried @null?

Jim Kosloskey

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

[Manny Zachodin]

I tried @null ask per your advice and it worked. Do you know if @blank will work too? Thanks again for your advice.

[Jim Kosloskey]

Manny,

There is not an intrinsic temp variable that I am aware of that is known as @blank.

Besides, if this is an HL/7 or X12 message, you should not see a field (or component or sub-component for that matter) with all spaces.

If however, this is something other than a structured message (such as FRL or VRL) then you will need to use a Tcl proc to check to see if the field is all spaces or if it contains spaces in any dimension.

Jim Kosloskey

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

[Anonymous]

Manny,

What I’ve done in the past if a message comes in with a space in an HL7 field is to set a temp variable (in this case you could use @blank) to equal a space.  Then you can use that @blank in your IF statement.

Hope this helps…

Thomas G. Rioux

[Mary Bodoh-Stone]

Hi,

I need to check if a field is null or contains 2 blanks (purposely put there).  I assigned a temp variable @2blanks to =”  ” or  =  <— 2 spaces here.

Then depending on if MyMod ne @2blanks ….do something  I get a tcl error no matter which way I try.

MESSAGE 1

[0:TEST] QDX_Tcl_SplitList({ ) failed: unmatched open brace in list

Internal XPM Tcl error

QDX_Tcl_SplitList failed:: unmatched open brace in list

Suggestions?  Thanks.

– Mary

[Levy Lazarre]

Mary,

I was curious about your error, so I tried the second assignment:

Code:

I assigned a temp variable @2blanks  =  <— 2 spaces here.

I then tried an IF statement: IF Myfield ne @2blanks and it worked fine. There was no syntax error.

[Tom Rioux]

Maybe the issue isn’t with your @2blanks variable but the “MyMod” that you are attempting to reference with your if.

[Chris Williams]

The error being reported is with the argument you are passing to the proc  QDX_Tcl_SplitList. It would appear that it is a variable whose value resolves to “{“.

[Author]

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