We have data that has ; as separator and has fields that look like this:

abcd \; efgh

That's a single field.

The backslash escapes the ; so that the data is abcd ; efgh.

This same data set also has

abcd \n efgh

Here the backslash precedes an ordinary non-delimiter. The data is supposed to be abcd \n efgh. That is, this data set requires the backslash to be retained in the data when it is not preceding the start of a delimiter.

Am I missing something or is it impossible to model this?

It would seem there needs to be a flag to indicate whether the escape characters that don't actually escape a delimiter are to be retained or not.

Mike Beckerle | OGF DFDL Workgroup Co-Chair | Tresys Technology | www.tresys.com

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