Select Data for "Floating Trap" where no space exsist

Altair Forum User

I don't know if I am over thinking this or under none the less.

 

I have a table that is similar to below. I am trying to do a floating trap.

None of the rows have all of the collumns. (No row will have 1 - 9) So it is impossible to do a detail on one with all 1 - 9. .

 

Example

 

|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9| <<<< My data does not have a header. Example Purposes

|1|2|3|||6|7|||

|1||3||5|6|7|8|9|

||||4|5|6||8|9|

 

How can I select somthing to trap between the ||

 

 

 

Or is it possible?

Altair Forum User

Hi Vaughn,

 

You should be able to open this as a database and you won't need to worry about the trap.  The latest versions should detect everything for you, but you will need to specify the pipe character on the older versions I believe.

 

If the report is a little more complex than your sample and you need headers and footers, the database option might not be appropriate.  In this case, there are a couple of approaches that should work.

 

Can you add a 'dummy' line temporarily to build the trap?  If so  you'll need to change the trap character set away from standard in the Options->Input section so that you can use pipe as the floating trap. It's reserved as the Numeric OR trap in the standard set.  The dummy line won't need to appear in your real data set.

 

Alternatively, use a non blank trap in the first column to capture every line, then select the entire line as one field.  You can then split this field out in the table with calculated fields.  You'll run into template width limitations if your real data is more than 254 characters in a line. You don't need the dummy line for this, but I accidentally left it in the screen shot.

 

 

Regards,

Steve.