Assignment Files

Assignment File Syntax

An assignment file is divided into sections, which organize assignment settings and allow Uniface to check the syntax of your assignments. See Assignment File Sections.

The assignment settings themselves typically have the format :

Setting {=} Value

For more information, see Assignment Settings.

In addition to section headers and settings, an assignment file can include:

• #FILE directives—used to include the contents of another assignment file. For more information, see Including Assignment Files.
• Comment lines—denoted by a semicolon (;). The semicolon can be preceded by spaces and tab characters, but not by other characters.

  Note:  Comments must be defined on separate lines. They cannot be defined on the same line as an assignment setting.

• Line continuation markers—the characters %\ can be used to indicate that a path or setting continues on the following line. This can be especially useful in long path specifications, connector parameter lists, or when a line contains strings encrypted by the Pathscrambler utility.
• Blank lines—to enhance readability by separating groups of related assignments.
• Caret symbol (^) to escape characters that must be treated as part of the data rather than interpreted by Uniface.

Line Continuation in Assignment Files

Uniface has a limit of 1023 characters per line but not all operating systems support this limit. Long lines are difficult for human users to read and may become even longer when they contain encrypted strings. In such cases, the line continuation marker (%\) can be useful.

When Uniface reads an assignment file containing lines with line continuation markers, the line following the marker is appended to the line having the marker. The marker itself and possible trailing spaces are removed from the line, leading spaces and tabs of the following line are also removed. Spaces or tabs before the %\ marker are not removed. This allows formatting such as the following:

[PATHS]
$DB       ORA:database|((username))|%\
                       ((password))
$REM_DB   TCP:((machine1+port|user|passwd)) + %\
          DB2:((database.schema|%\
                db2user|%\
                db2passwd))

If you have a very long encrypted line, you can break it up in multiple lines using the %\ continuation marker, as long as you don’t change, add, or remove any of the characters and do not insert whitespace before the %\. For example:

[LOGICALS]
myloggical = (!ASl4K8FAaXujDGZEnAf7%\
             nCJl1uyma4QaQsGl2w6/j9Ot!)

When an assignment file containing continuation markers is copied of FTP'd into a physical file on the iSeries, the lines are padded with blanks to fill the fixed record length. Therefore, spaces after %\ are allowed, but no other characters. If some other character follows the marker, the %\ is treated as a literal and not a line continuation marker.

Protecting Sensitive Information

Assignment files can contain sensitive information in path definitions, such as user names, passwords, server and database names. To protect this information, you can use the Pathscrambler utility to encrypt path definitions and other information that has been delimited in the assignment file. For more information, see pathscrambler.exe .

Escaping Literal Characters

Use the caret (^) to escape characters that must be treated as part of the data rather than interpreted by Uniface. This applies to:

• Encryption or decryption delimiters interpreted by Pathscrambler: (()), (! or !).

  For example, ^!) will be treated as literal !) and not a decryption end marker.

• Line continuation characters: %\

  For example, %^\ will be a literal %\ and not a line continuation marker.

• The caret symbol itself, when it is not followed by an alphanumeric character or whitespace.

  For example, ^^\ will be literal ^\

• Other non-alphanumeric and non-whitespace characters that must be treated as a literals.

Assignment File Sections

All assignments that follow a section header belong to that section, until another section header is found, or until the end of the file.