xychange command does not report missing input trans tables

RE: xychange command does not report missing input trans tables

Jay Baldwin — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 15:33:13 GMT

[raises hand as someone who also didn't read updated documentation; writes Perl code instead]

EXAMPLE:

($xytt, $xyout) = ( "$libname3/_tt_img2b.x" , "$inf.I2b" ); $xyin = &jpXychange (\@rmlist, $xytt, $xyin, $xyout);

################################################################ # sub to run job processing xychange and return outfile name as next infile name # (jb 06-mar-2012) ################################################################ sub jpXychange { my ($dlist, $xytt, $xyin, $xyout) = @_; -e $xytt or die "ERROR: TTFILE $xytt not found: $!"; -e $xyin or die "ERROR: INFILE $xyin not found: $!"; `exec xychange -l $xytt $xyin $xyout` ; push @$dlist, $xyout; return ($xyout); }

RE: xychange command does not report missing input trans tables

Sharon Appleton — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 20:08:37 GMT

Remember to upvote your idea! :)

RE: xychange command does not report missing input trans tables

Clifton Parsons — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 19:47:21 GMT

Ah, okay, that makes sense, Thank you for the reply, Bart. By the way, I submitted the suggestion for rewording the default message.

RE: xychange command does not report missing input trans tables

Bart Terryn — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 19:33:46 GMT

And a quick scan of the import.pl shows:

# Handle quoted arguments that (may) contain spaces
@rargs = "-e -proc -cd $divpath $xychange $input $output" =~ /(["'].+?["']|\S+)/g;

So xychange is run with the -e switch when using the import.pl tool...

RE: xychange command does not report missing input trans tables

Clifton Parsons — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 19:09:20 GMT

The 2 certs I mentioned is about all there will be to inherit but I promise you'll get your fair share.

I will submit the suggestion to the SDL ideas site.

Now - something just occurred to me. As I wrote in my original message, a manual import fails under this scenario.

Does this mean that the xychange command uses the default behavior of looking in Lsyslib as a last resort but that import.pl does not use this default behavior?

Just wondering...

RE: xychange command does not report missing input trans tables

Bart Terryn — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 19:05:49 GMT

Clifton,

Many thanks for including me in your will.
But I do want to stipulate that I do not recognize any debts that you might want to pass on to me :-)

Changing the message is an excellent idea.
So why don't you put in onto the SDL ideas site.
(https://community.sdl.com/ideas/contenta-ideas/i/ideas-xpp)
I would support that idea...

RE: xychange command does not report missing input trans tables

Clifton Parsons — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 18:45:50 GMT

Thank you all for the replies. I tried the -e switch and it will do just fine. I guess it always comes down to me not reading the documentation - apologies for that.

Having said that, if I had to quibble I'd say that I have no problem with the default BEHAVIOR but the default MESSAGE is misleading. It makes it sound like the process found my tables and used them.

A better default settings message when not using the -e switch might be something along the lines of "Input table 'aaa' in Lbbb not found - using input table 'sys' in Lsyslib instead".

Just my two cents worth - I'm not requesting any kind of change. For now I am glad to use the hyphen -e switch and will be sure to include Bart in my will.

Cheers.

RE: xychange command does not report missing input trans tables

Bart Terryn — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 18:26:11 GMT

Although you might find it strange behaviour, Xychange translation tables are looked up in exactly the same way as any other style file. If it can not find a file it ends up by using the 'sys' version that is sitting in the Lsyslib folder.
(just like Steve just explained)

So the behaviour you see is (and has always been) intended. Whether it makes sense that is a different question.

That is why I asked a couple of years ago to change the default behaviour. But as engineering hates to change existing behaviour (and that is a good thing but at the same time very annoying), I got the -e option in return.

I always make sure that the '-e' option is set in the interface and then set the profile to remember my last settings. Like that you will always run xychange manually with the -e option set and get an error when the translation table can not be found. (I always set the -kp option as well, a wonderful thing when debugging things)

Tip for your programmers: if you create a script that transforms things always make sure to add the -e option when running a xychange step. Like that xychange will fail when it can not find the table it needs!

RE: xychange command does not report missing input trans tables

Steve Piercey — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 18:14:51 GMT

Since the beginning of Xy (somewhere back in 1982), xychange has always defaulted to "tt sys" if it cannot find the specified translation table. As you have noticed, it contains a translate of "a" to "a" which basically does nothing. I don't know for sure why it does this, but if I had to guess its because we did not want auto-processing to stop for any reason. An error would abort and the goal is to always have some Division produced even though it might not be correct.

If you look at "xyhelp xychange", you will see that there is a "-e" option which means exact match the translation table and not default to "sys". So if you can have it anyway you want.

RE: xychange command does not report missing input trans tables

Clifton Parsons — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 17:54:12 GMT

Hi, Barry. If I add -X, I get this:

Pass 1, Transformation table: crentity
/opt/xyvision/sd_liz/Lsyslib/_tt_sys.x, Size=577
Transformed ... bytes
...
Pass 2, Transformation table: TestXych
/opt/xyvision/sd_liz/Lsyslib/_tt_sys.x, Size=577
Transformed ... bytes
...
>>> Successful completion of XyChange <<<

It almost looks like the process is going to Lsyslib to grab the default "sys" trans tables and swapping them in for the tables in the JT. I do have an output file for my command and it has no byte size changes from the input file so that would support the idea that the "sys" table is being called since all it does is replace "a" with "a".

I also tried adding -debug to my command line call but I saw no new information.

Am I the only one with this behavior?

RE: xychange command does not report missing input trans tables

Barry Stankiewicz — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 17:24:33 GMT

Try running xychange with the -X switch for added verbose message and see if that provided more detailed messages when trying to run against an incorrect library or translation table. There is also a -debug switch available to you when running from command.

For more info on xychange, run xyhelp xychange, or check the Command Line Utilities doc.