Creating Null Attributes

You might need to insert null attributes (empty lines) into items, especially when creating dictionary items. This can be done in several different ways.

The commonest mistake users make when trying to create null attributes is to input a space instead of a null attribute. The space is a legitimate ASCII character (X'20').

Input Mode

The example below demonstrates how to create an item in input mode using CTRL+^ to create four null attributes.

:ED DICT XNAMES 1
New item
Top
.I
001 S
002 1
003 Last Name
004 Ctrl+^Ctrl+^Ctrl+^Ctrl+^
005 L
006 10
007 return
Top
.FS
Top
.P
001 S
002 1
003 Last Name
004
005
006
007
008
009 L
010 10
EOI 010
.EX
'1' exited from file 'XNAMES'

Create a new dictionary item called '1'
in the XNAMES file





Input CTRL+^ four times. Note that CTRL+^
echoes as ^ on your terminal.









Attributes 4-8 are null

The next example shows that you can do the same thing by creating your item on one continuous line and inserting two adjacent attribute marks where the null attribute is to be.

:ED DICT XNAMES 1
New item
Top
.I
001 S^1^Last Name^^^^^^L^10
002 return
Top
.FI
'1' filed in file 'XNAMES'

Create the new item 1 in the XNAMES file.
Note that each ^ is created by pressing CTRL+^.

Replacing Dummy Characters

The following example shows you how to create an item using space characters (X'20') in place of the null attributes and then use the R command to replace the space characters with nulls.

:ED DICT XNAMES 1
New item
Top
.I
001 S
002 1
003 Last Name
004 Space
005 Space
006 space
007 Space
008 Space
009 L
010 10
011 return
Top
.R99: ::
.004
.005
.006
.007
.008
EOI 010
.FI
'1' filed in file 'XNAMES'

Create the new dictionary item 1 in the XNAMES file.





Press the space bar (X'20') where the null attributes
are to be.







Replace the spaces with nulls. Note that using the
: as a delimiter restricts the search to column one.
This means that other spaces in the text are not
affected by the replacement.