Do you need an editor for fixed blocked files? 1

[agynamix]

Hi there,

I'm currently trying to do some research for a next software application I'm developing and I'm very interested in your opinion.

In nearly all of the projects I'm doing for customers (large Telcos) we need to handle files from host systems that are mostly fixed blocked.

Now it's very painful to edit/view/search those files in a standard text editor because you do not see the underlying record structure. I know for the host there is an application called "file aid" but for PC's I haven't found any (well Microfocus has such an editor in it's tool suite but it's old and very expensive).

My questions:

- Do you know any such editor that runs on Windows/Mac/Unix for an affordable price?
- Would you need such an editor?
- If you would be willing to buy such a tool what would be the features you'd like to see?
- Would you be willing to beta test?

Thanks for your help,

Torsten Uhlmann

 

[mikrom]

I have SPF/SE version 2.5, I use it now and then only for maintenance of the S-COBOL code (for AppMaster Builder).
I thought that it's only for source code editing.

 

[Crox]

@webrabbit: you can try it out by downloading a trial version that can not save files.... I like the way it works. There are a few statements like for example:

Select block .zf 15 .zl 22;cut

now the columns from column 15 thru 22 are cut out....

you can paste them again on an other positon

@mikron: you can edit any file. It depends on the profile how it is handled. When you have to separate records or things like that, i use Ca-realia's RCOPY to break up a binairy file into smaller records or so. Also to convert from ebcdic to ascii or the other way around, i use rcopy. It is for free and works very fast. SPF/SE can also edit ebcdic. It handles also macro's in C. SPF/SE is also very usable to edit files with large records, larger than the mainframe wants to handle.

 

[mikrom]

I love the line commands on SPF/SE, you know what I mean: cc..cc for copying the block mm..mm for moving, shifting blocks to left or right with ((n..(( or ))n..)) etc.. This is very useful for languages like COBOL, RPG and other.

I know, that it support the macros written in C-like language - we are using some macros. Btw, some colleagues of me dislike it, because it doesn't support macros in REXX and therefore they rather use kedit.

Privately, I'm using vim because it supports the syntaxhighlighting of all the languages I'm using - and it's free. And $199 for SPE/SE or $129 for kediw seems for me to be expensive.
Ok, I'm not working on mainfraime and doesn't need to look at fixed blocked files. I'm the programmer on iSeries (aka AS/400), where we have DB2 and can look at it using SQL.