As Linda in Becker would say "here's the thing..."

I am currently testing a system which uses a record length of 538 characters (ASCII) or 385 bytes (Binary) and I need to generate test data for this system using existing data. Does anyone know of any tools which will allow me to easily edit records of this length in UNIX or Windows. If it was a Mainframe system I'd use Fileaid, is there anything similar?

Cheers

Bill

I'd use VI, but unless you know it, it ain't that easy.
Download one of the many Unix command line utils and see if its any good.
I'm currently using something called UNIXDOS. Got it from Tucows I think.

Can you explain a bit further? You want to generate test data, how? Those record lengths aren't big at all. Do you have test data you need to convert somehow or what?

stevecotton,
The issue is that the test data will have to be hand-crafted. We are adding new fields to the internal record (these fields already exist in the input files). I can use current input files from our live system and amend the fields under test to check that validation / processing is taking place correctly.

I guess the real problems are that I hate VI and was looking for a utility which would allow me to provide a file definition and a file and have the file displayed with all the fields labelled, just like FileAid does.

Never mind, I'll just have to do something with Perl.

I can't see how vi would help anyway. You need perls pack() and unpack() for that.

Steve.