xlate output appending data

[Mark Perschbacher]

I have an HL7 to vrl xlate I am working on, and in the Iterate, COPY field, I have this code snippet pulling out a range of data

set sata $xlateInVals

set data2 [lindex $sata]

set data2 [string map {“{” “” “}” “”} $data2]

append data1 “$data2 “

set final “SPECIMEN:”

set elect “CLINICAL HISTORY:”

set signed [string first $final $data1]

set last [string first $elect $data1]

set words [string range $data1 $signed $last]

set xlateOutVals

What I am seeing is that the first message comes across fine, the second and third, etc., gets what looks like the xlateInVals data appended for the second message appended on the end of the vrl.  I have a SUPPRESS at the beginning of the xlate, and here is the rest.  Any ideas?

Topic

[Jim Kosloskey]

Mark,

Should the CONTINUE be inside the ITERATE?

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 30+ years Cloverleaf, 61 years IT – old fart.

[Mark Perschbacher]

You’re right.  I moved it down, but still getting the second xlateInVals appended to the second message and so on.

[Robert Milfajt]

I am not sure about:

Code:

append data1 “$data2 “

What I am not sure about is keeping the variable data1 around between iterations.

Is your goal to create a message for each OBX, or one message with diag containing a concatenation of all the OBX’s?

If the latter, you may want to break your COPY into a COPY and CONCAT.  The first part would get only the part of OBX.5 that you want and set it to a local variable, e.g., @diag, then CONCAT @diag to the VRL diag field.

Hope this helps,

Robert Milfajt
Northwestern Medicine
Chicago, IL

[Jim Kosloskey]

Mark,

What are your ‘Global Options’ for the VRL Configuration?

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 30+ years Cloverleaf, 61 years IT – old fart.

[Mark Perschbacher]

Robert, I am trying to execute the later, so I will give your suggestion a try.

Jim, the Global Prop are

Field Separator  |

Def. subfield sep  x20

Def. subsubfield sep –

Don’t use tagged field

[Mark Perschbacher]

Robert, still getting message 2 xlateInVals appended on to message 2, 3, and so on.  It is interesting that I tried changing the last line of the snipet to set xlateOutVals $words, and it stopped appending, but all it sent across was the first word of string $words.

[Jim Kosloskey]

Mark,

What is the configuration of the diag field (specifically does it have any subfields configured)?

It is not surprising you only got the first element of the list $word with your last change as xlateOutVals is a list and now the Xlate will only take the first element of the list rather than the entire list.

Have you tried to use CALL instead of COPY?

The COPY is tying to do something with your output field as well as what you ar trying.

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 30+ years Cloverleaf, 61 years IT – old fart.

[Mark Perschbacher]

Jim, no diag does not have any subfields configured.  So are you recommending just substituing CALL for COPY as it is?

[Jim Kosloskey]

Mark,

I am suggesting to try CALL instead of COPY.

All of your Source and Destination information will stay the same. You will have to specify your Tcl in a different location I believe so you might want to copy it before changing from CALL to COPY.

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 30+ years Cloverleaf, 61 years IT – old fart.

[Mark Perschbacher]

Gotcha, I have not used CALL before, but it sounds like you are suggesting I pull the snipet out of the xlate and move it to a seperate proc.

[Jim Kosloskey]

Mark,

No need to get rid of the snippet (I don’t use snippets but that is another matter), you will just need to move the code.

Presently in the COPY the snippet code resides in the Pre Proc location. In a CALL the code will exist in the Proc location.

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 30+ years Cloverleaf, 61 years IT – old fart.

[Mark Perschbacher]

Jim, I decided to take the path of least resistance.  I have some pre-xlate procs that I am using for other types of specimens, and thought I’d see if I could just run some code within the xlate, but I just modifed one of the pre-xlate procs, and it works fine.  As usual, thanks for your help.

[Robert Milfajt]

One last idea you can try to keep it in the Xlate…

For your copy statement, change the souce to have two arguments:

Code:

1(0).1(0).1(%g1).OBX(0).#5(0)
~diag

Your destination stays the same:

Code:

diag

Your TCL inside changes to look like:

Code:

set sata $xlateInVals
set data1 [lindex $sata 1]
set data2 [lindex $sata 0]
set data2 [string map {”{” “” “}” “”} $data2]
set final “SPECIMEN:”
set elect “CLINICAL HISTORY:”
set signed [string first $final $data2]
set last [string first $elect $data2]
set words [string range $data2 $signed $last]
append data1 “$words” ” ”
set xlateOutVals [list $data1]

Robert Milfajt
Northwestern Medicine
Chicago, IL

[Mark Perschbacher]

Robert, I made the changes as you suggested, and I am not getting anything returned.  Save your brain power for my next post, thanks.

[Bob Richardson]

Mark and company,

With using the append command in an Xlate, I have found that the variable will persist in memory in this TCL interpreter.  This definitely shows up in an inline TCL procedure;  so I just clear the variable before any append operation to avoid its inevitable expansion:

set data1 {}

append data1 “$data2”

Not sure about the TCL fragment (TCLindex based guys) but it doesn’t hurt to clear your variables first before setting them anyway (Old IBM programmer habit – the golden days of Cobol).

Enjoy.

[Author]

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