Using tpsHL7CompareField to kill message when field is null

[Gary Sabula]

I’m using a tclproc tpsHL7CompareField that I’ve seen mentioned many times in this forum.  In this case, I want to kill a message if a particular field is unvalued.  The command I’m using is “tpsHL7CompareField {SEGMENT PID} {FIELD 3} {COMP 1} {LIST { }} {DISP KILL}” with many variations on the LIST variable where I want to indicate the field as unvalued.  I’m hoping someone familiar with this proc can tell me how to specify “unvalued”.  Seems like it should be so simple…and I’m sure it is for someone who uses tcl more than once a year.  Thanks in advance!

Topic

[Mark Thompson]

Gary,

The original author of the tpsHL7CompareField proc (yours truly) did not code some of the features very wisely.  In all of the versions I have seen posted on the forum, a LIST argument must contain at least 1 value to be considered valid.

Later versions of the proc contained a REGEXP option.  This would allow a Regular Expression to check for “1 or more” characters in a field.  Unfortunately, changes to our corporate policy make it more difficult to submit code to Clovertech.  Please e-mail me directly if you are interested in fixing the code.

- Mark Thompson
HealthPartners

[Author]

Replies