AskPlus 8.4.4

AskPlus E.8.4.4

AskPlus E.8.4.4 was released in February 2018.

Highlights:

• Date formatting now supported with file output.
• New numeric format character to "mask" digits when printing sensitive data.
• Several bug fixes.
• Includes all features introduced in E.8.4.2 and E.8.4.3
• Several of these enhancements are included in the libsdtox.so (or .sl) library file.

Instructions for Installing AskPlus:

Installing AskPlus on HPUX

Backwards Compatibility:

• The underscore character now has a special meaning in numeric formats. It is unlikely that this character was used previously in numeric edit masks, however, if it was the new behavior is different. Previously an underscore was treated as an insertion character, starting with E.8.4.4, the underscore (in numeric masks) will be replaced by an * to mask certain digits.

Enhancements

• The date formats introduced in version E.8.4.2 are now supported with file output like ASD files:

• Formats like "mm-dd-yyyy" and "MMM-dd-yyyy" will be applied to file output. See ??? for more information on date formatting.

• Remove leading blanks from formatted numeric data output to asd files.
• Numeric formats now support "masking" digits:

• When printing account numbers or SSNs it is possible to mask certain digits using an edit mask.
• Use an underscore in the mask to represent the position of a digit and in the final output the underscore will be replaced by an * character.
• This is supported in regular report output and local file output.

 The mask "_____9999" will produce *****1234

• New special operator names were added for clarity:

• Use !len(str) or !strlen(str) to return the length of a string (trailing blanks are ignored.)

• It is now valid to pass a numeric value to !len (and !strlen). The value will be converted to ASCII and that length will be returned.

• Use !pos(str1, str2) or !strpos(str1, str2) to return the position of str2 in str1.

Bug Fixes

• Fix a coredump that could occur when an invalid special operator was specified.
• Fix a coredump with E4 fields being output to a local file with the mask "$,$$$,$$9.99-".
• Fix a bug when reading HISTRY data change records (a few records were being ignored)