Concatenting Strings Help

Question

Concatenting Strings Help

mjs84 (Aerospace)

(OP)

19 Feb 04 15:03

I need to build a string based on some input data.  The data is coming from user input from a motif application so I don't know the length of any piece of data.
Here is my code:

      character*50   str0,s0
      character*50   str1,s1
      character*50   str2,s2
      character*50   str3,s3
      character*10   str4,s4
      character*10   str5,s5
      character*70   elemID
      integer*4      lenchr

c  *** note: s0 thru s5 are variable from motif applic.***

      str0 = s0(1:lentrim(s0))
      str1 = s1(1:lentrim(s1))
         .
         .
         .
      str6 = s6(1:lentrim(s6))

      elemID = str0 // ',' // str1 // ',' // str2 // ',' //
     &         str3 // ',' // str4 // ',' // str5

      open(1,"filename", status="UNKNOWN")
      write(1,'(a,2x,i4)') elemID, lenchr

c ***  end of code ***

When I print out the values, I get the correct values for all the separate variables, ie...
str0 = base
str1 = A
str2 = B
str3 = C
str4 = D
str5 = E

When I print out 'eleID' and 'lenchr', I expect this:
'base,A,B,C,D,E  14'
... but what i get is:
'base  4'

I am assuming this has something to do with the string declarations, but I'm not sure.  I know that when all the strings are added up, they will be less than 70 characters, but I don't know the length of any of the particular fields.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
mjs84

DickRussell (Chemical) · Answer 1 · 2004-02-19 17:11:59

Consider what you are concatenating. STR0 through STR3 are each length 50 characters. Concatenating just the first two (with that comma in between) overflows "elemID". You ought to do your LEN_TRIMming and concatenating all together:

elemID=len_trim(s0)//','//len_trim(s1)//','//....etc.

That will eliminate all those trailing blanks, as well as save the auxilliary storage variables, which, as you coded them, wind up being exact copies (trim the blanks, then pad with blanks again to fill the variable to its defined length).

DickRussell (Chemical) · Answer 2 · 2004-02-20 08:01:04

Whew! I got back here before someone else pointed out the flaw in my advice! When I awoke this morning, it dawned on me that in my suggestion to combine the trimming and concatenation, I mistakenly used LEN_TRIM (which returns the length with blanks trimmed), when I should have used just TRIM (which returns the trimmed string itself instead of the length). The revised line would be then this:

elemID=trim(s0)//','//trim(s1)//','//....etc.

What an embarassment! But I hope I have redeemed myself. HTH.

mjs84 (Aerospace) · Answer 3 · 2004-02-23 08:05:05

DickRussell,

Thanks for your help.

mjs84

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