Record Output

Record output is useful when you want to create temporary output of a set of sorted or merged data, to create a subset of the sorted or merged information, or to alter the records before outputting them.

To output from SORT-MERGE/XL by record, use either the HPSORTOUTPUT or HPMERGEOUTPUTintrinsic. The syntax is:

   HPSORTOUTPUT (status, buffer, length);
 
   HPMERGEOUTPUT (status, buffer, length);

The buffer parameter contains the record to be input.

	NOTE: The buffer parameter is a character (byte) array. If your record contains other data types, you must reconstruct them from buffer.

The length parameter returns the length of the record. After the last record is reached, length returns a value of negative one (-1).

If you use record output, do not specify the outputfile parameter in HPSORTINIT or HPMERGEINIT. Use the intrinsic ASCII if you have specified outputoption in HPSORTINIT to be binary format, but you want displayable ASCII characters instead.

An example follows:

   var
     status : INTEGER;
     buffer : packed array [1..80] of CHAR;
     length : SHORTINT;
        .
        .
        .
   HPSORTOUTPUT (status, buffer, length);