Quirky string imports

[Lew]

I generate some dbf's and xml's for one of my endusers to import. This
is an MS Access (only) user and blank/empty strings are universally
imported as Access nulls (by which I think she
means 0 length strings). She has to concatenate several columns to
create a key to work with, but the 0 length columns - all significant
from a data standpoint - throw everything off. I'm not able to push
filler characters into the data because other users need it as is.

Surely there's a workaround for this, but what is it?

-Lew S

 

[Ken Snell]

Concatenate a delimiter character (one that is not present in any of the
strings in the records) between each field's values, for example:

Field1 & "|" & Field2 & "|" & Field3 & "|" & Field4

This will create more uniqueness for the string that she wants to use as a
key.