Convert file to Comma-Delimited format

This is what Perl is made for! It should be super-easy to write a quick and dirty Perl script to open the file, read each line, substitute spaces with commas, and save the new line to a new file with a .csv extension.

It might look something like this (bear with me; I'm working from memory here - no book):

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

open( SPACEFILE, "/path/to/spacedelimited.file" ) ;
open( CSV, ">/path/to/commaseparated.csv" ) ;
while( $line = ){
$line =~ s/ +/,/g ;
print CSV $line ;
}
close( SPACEFILE ) ;
close( CSV ) ;

I haven't tried running this, so I'm not sure if it will work perfectly, but it gives you the general idea. Also, I'm not sure about the regexp - it's been a while ;-). Finally, I want topoint out that while Perl works great for this, there's no reason you couldn't implement this program in any program language that is convenient to you.

Good luck.

Jay Eckles
www.jayeckles.com

Using Replace Command of VB Script you can achieve this.

Syntax.

Replace(Str, " ", ",")
this replaces Space with Comma.

Using Replace Command of VB Script you can achieve this.

Syntax.

Replace(Str, " ", ",")
this replaces Space with Comma.

For each character in the file you can replace space with comma using Replace function.
But first and foremost thing is you are downloading from AS400. if you are using Client access express you have transfer file from 400 to PC where you can set to format options. Or download it into Excel and use the field separator as comma instead.
All the best
Raja venkatesh

Here's a complete script to do it:

Set oFso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set oTsIn = oFso.OpenTextFile("z:\spaces.txt", 1, False)
Set oTsOut = oFso.OpenTextFile("z:\commas.txt", 2, True)

Do
oTsOut.WriteLine Replace(oTsIn.ReadLine, " ", ",")
Loop Until oTsIn.AtEndOfStream

oTsIn.Close
oTsOut.Close
MsgBox "Done"

You say you have a script that downloads the file to a PC. I have a small (20k) executable that seems to fit the bill. When it is run, it finds every file in the directory where it resides with a "txt" extension, goes through each, and replaces every instance of the space character with a comma. Then it saves the file with a "csv" extension.

Unfortunately, your requirement of "without user intervention" is a bit tricky - the executable has to be run in order to work, and once it is finished, it ends and will need to be run again next time. I suppose that you could run it via whatever script you are using to download the file to the PC.

If you want to take a look at it, let me know, its freeware, and i'll be glad to email you a copy.