Fun With Extended Characters

[Johnson, Tracy]

We had an extended character entered into one of our Work Order databases.  I had a fun this morning writing a little Quiz code to grab the work order.  

On the Windows side it could have been entered as Unicode Hexideximal (03BC) or ALT-X.   This can happen when a non-U.S. user has a Windows language bar enabled at the bottom right of their screen.  Usually invoked by hitting ALT first.  (And rightly so in say for example,  ...  France, where the data entry occurred.)  On an old HP terminal you can see it if you hit Extend_Char followed by a backslash.  

I'm sure non-English users run into this situation all the time.  However as a U.S. user I'm not used to it and it created a little adventure.

The character was ASCII(243) appended to one of our Work Order numbers.  It displayed on an HP terminal as a Greek Mu (µ).   Or if using FREEVT3K in Linux it would show as an acute accented small o (ó).

The Quiz code to grab the Work Order (WOWO) from our open Work Order file (OWOF) was: 

ACCESS OWOF
DEFINE NUM243 INTEGER = 243
DEFINE ASCII243 CHAR*3 = CHARACTERS(NUM243)
DEFINE MUSYMBOL CHAR*1 = ASCII243[2:1]
DEFINE MYSELECT CHAR*8 = "35415-1" + MUSYMBOL
SELECT IF WOWO = MYSELECT
REPORT WOWO


Feel free to comment on my methods.  

(YES I COULD have used a substring to weed out the unwanted character but this was more fun.)


Tracy Johnson
Measurement Specialties, Inc.

BT







NNNN





Tracy Johnson
Measurement Specialties, Inc.

BT







NNNN

-----Original Message-----
From: Graham, Shelley 
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 9:42 AM
To: Johnson, Tracy
Cc: Harris, Bill
Subject: FW: Strange W/O Number


any ideas how Bill can figure out which keyboard key to type for this?


Shelley Graham
Business Analyst


Phone:  757 766-4231
email:  shelley.graham at meas-spec.com 





From: Graham, Shelley 
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 9:39 AM
To: Harris, Bill
Subject: RE: Strange W/O Number


Here you go...  You may have to test a keyboard setting to find the character...

W.O. NUMBER    PART NUMBER
35415-1µ               REP-LOAD

Shelley Graham
Business Analyst


Phone:  757 766-4231
email:  shelley.graham at meas-spec.com 





From: Harris, Bill 
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 6:35 AM
To: Graham, Shelley
Subject: Strange W/O Number


Shelley,

May I please request your assistance?

I am back in Germany.  I have a message from our LCSB office that they have found a strange Work Order that has a "special character" imbedded on a W/O and they can not delete or close it.
The Work Order begins with 35415-1.  There is a valid W/O with this number, but also another one that has a special character after the -1.

I can not see what this character is and forget all the ways to do that.  

Can you see what you can find in the Database for me?  It is in DB 55.

Thanks,

Bill Harris 
Business Analyst 
Measurement Specialties, Inc.