Filenames and wildcards
Contents
EscapeE Professional editions only
When selecting files to export you can use 'wildcards' to specify the Input and Output filenames and/or folder. If you have defined data fields on the pages you can use these in the file name, see Setting advanced options in field definitions.
Input
Specify the folder to be monitored on the Automatic page of the Configuration dialog: e.g.
*.PRN
processes all PRN files instead of LSH.
H:\REPORTS\*.*
processes all files arriving in the 'REPORTS' folder of the H drive.
In automatic mode the input file is either renamed or deleted – see Setting automatic export options. The default is to rename as *.BAK; see /RENAME.
N.B. if you use a wild-card such as *.* you must opt to have the files deleted, otherwise if they are merely renamed, they will be processed repeatedly!
Output
When you select an export format, output files are automatically created with a suitable extension and stored in the specified folder unless you a specify different extension and folder: e.g.
E:\ARCHIVE\*.DOC
creates files with the 'DOC' extension and places them in the ARCHIVE folder of the E drive.
If the output file name would be the same as the input file then the default suffix of '_out' is added to the output name (except if the /NQ option is used).
If 'Multi-page TIFFs' has been selected, there may be more than one page in each output file; see TIFF images file export. Normally, EscapeE creates a file for every page (data record) in a TIFF job, appending a number to the filename to distinguish the pages from one another. The default is TEST1.TIF, TEST2.TIF etc..
Similarly, when creating multiple FDL pages they are named using the file stem, e.g. FILE1.FDL, FILE2.FDL.
To change these names, use one or more consecutive " characters to indicate how to construct output names for the numbering the page image files, e.g.
*.PRN /TIFF /TO *"".TIF
converts an input file called TEST.PRN into
TEST01.TIF, TEST02.TIF ... TEST99.TIF, TEST100.TIF etc.
The position of the string of " characters specifies the position of the page number in the name and the length of the string determines minimum number of digits for the page number. If the number requires fewer digits then leading zeros are inserted but digits are never discarded – they will always be inserted at the specified point. If there are no " characters, or no output specification is given, then a multi-page TIFF file is created.
For example if the command:
ESCAPEE *.PRN /TIFF 5 /TO *"".TIF
found an input file called TEST.PRN it would create files with names TEST01.TIF, TEST02.TIF ... TEST99.TIF, TEST100.TIF etc. whereas the command:
ESCAPEE *.""" /TIFF 5
would create files with names TEST.001, TEST.002 ... TEST.999, TEST.1000 etc..
A "plus" sign is a valid character for use in filenames, but when Page numbering has been engaged, a + will be replaced by the page number in the output filename, see About page numbers. For example, if the output file specification is *+.PDF, the 'Page 1 Number' is 3, the 'Template' is p", and the input filename is FILE1, an output file named FILE1p3.PDF is exported.
EscapeE can be set up to start a new output file whenever a specified field (or tag) is encountered or when a field changes. The output file name can be derived wholly or in part from the contents of a field – see Setting advanced options in field definitions.
If a field has been set up to be used in the output file name you will notice that an = wildcard has been inserted in the export file name specification. This indicates that the field value will be substituted instead of the first equals sign in the output file name. For example, if the file is called TEST.PCL, the field contains ABCD and the export file name specification is *=.PDF then the output file name will be TESTABCD.PDF. Experts may use this specification on the command line, see Run from the command line.
An output file specification can also incorporate parts of fields or special symbols, see Special fields in composed strings. This is an alternative to the use of special symbols such as *, + and =, though " is still permitted. For example, the special field _NAME is the stem of the file name (minus any path or extension) so you can use parts of the original file name in the output specification e.g.
C:\OUTPUT\{_NAME:1-8}\{_NAME:9}
This would use the first 8 characters of the input file name as the output folder, and the rest of the name as the file name. The special field _PATH is the original folder name and _EXT the original file extension, should they be needed.
A filename containing fields and/or composite fields is usually evaluated when the file is created. If, however, the specified field(s) cannot be found because they are undefined at the start, EscapeE waits till the end of the processing before looking for the field value(s) again so that the final output file's name can be constructed.
Note: The output file may also be created using a temporary extension and then renamed when complete. The temporary extension defaults to .TMP but can be changed using the /TEMP option – see Command line syntax.
Links
Wildcards in font substitution