Topic:
How can I check to see if there are tabs in my nav/well/carto file?

Description:
The IESX dataloader wants data in well behaved columns and data files which 
contain tabs often cause problems.        

Solution:
Use the sed command to search for tabs in your datafile.  The command:

sed -n 'l' filename

will identify tabs in a file.

For Sun Solaris/SunOS operating systems, the tab character is returned as a ">".
   First, you should check to see that the file (for example, a file called
   carto.dat) does not contain any > characters, or the output of the 
   following sed command could be confusing.  To do this, type:

     cat carto.dat | grep '>'
    
   If this does not return any lines, there are no > characters in the file.

   To check for tabs in the file carto.dat, execute the following 
   command in an xterm:

      sed -n 'l' carto.dat | grep '>'

   Each line containing a tab will be returned with the tab replaced by the >
   character.  If no lines are returned, the file contains no tabs.


For SGI IRIX operating systems, the tab character is returned as a "\t".

   First, you should check to see that the file (for example, a file called
   carto.dat) does not contain any \t strings, or the output of the 
   following sed command could be confusing.  To do this, type:

     cat carto.dat | grep '\t'   

   If this does not return any lines, there are no \t strings in the file.

   To check for tabs in the file carto.dat, execute the following 
   command in an xterm:

      sed -n 'l' carto.dat | grep '\t'

   Each line containing a tab will be returned with the tab replaced by the \t
   string.  If no lines are returned, the file contains no tabs.




Last Modified on: 06-OCT-00