IBM Support

The "Translate new lines in ASCII files" work area option and what it does

Question & Answer


Question

What is the "Translate new lines in ASCII files" work area option and what does it do?

Answer

An IBM Rational Synergy server can run on UNIX or Microsoft Windows. UNIX servers can support clients running on UNIX or Windows; Windows servers support Windows clients only.

ASCII-based source files (7-bit ASCII text) stored on the server are stored in the format native to the server. This means that UNIX servers store these files with a single linefeed character; a Windows server stores these with the Windows-native linefeed/carriage return combination.

When files are copied from a UNIX server to a Windows client's work area, these files need to be translated so that they will be functional and useable in a Windows environment - they have the "LF" at the end of each line translated to "CRLF". When these files are pushed back to the UNIX database, these files get the "CRLF" translated back to "LF".

The "Translate ASCII Files" setting on the work area, switched ON by default, governs the translation of ASCII files transferred between a UNIX server and Windows client work area ONLY. Translation of ASCII files never occurs between UNIX server and a UNIX client work area (not required), nor from a Windows server to a Windows client work area (also not required). This translation occurs via rcp functionality every time a file gets copied one way or the other from Windows client to UNIX server or vice-versa.

The Translate ASCII Files option should be left ON for nearly all common usage cases. The ONLY reason to turn it off is if a Windows client user has the requirement to populate a work area on a Windows file system with ASCII files in a UNIX format. An example of this is when a Windows client needs to populate a work area mounted on a Samba drive (a UNIX drive mounted on Windows) that is to be used to test in a UNIX environment.

If for some reason a Windows client user finds that one or more ASCII files in their Windows work area has a UNIX format and the Translate ASCII setting is ON, this means that these files have been stored improperly at some point (perhaps due to having the Translate ASCII setting turned off when it should not have been). The solution to this is to check out a new version of this file (using an appropriate task) and manually editing/fixing the new version of the file.

[{"Product":{"code":"SSC6Q5","label":"Rational Synergy"},"Business Unit":{"code":"BU053","label":"Cloud & Data Platform"},"Component":"General Information","Platform":[{"code":"PF002","label":"AIX"},{"code":"PF016","label":"Linux"},{"code":"PF027","label":"Solaris"},{"code":"PF033","label":"Windows"},{"code":"PF010","label":"HP-UX"}],"Version":"7.1a;7.1.0.1;7.1;7.0;6.5;6.4;6.3;6.5a;6.6a","Edition":"","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB45","label":"Automation"}}]

Document Information

Modified date:
22 December 2020

UID

swg21429759