SPECIFICATION OF ASCII FILE FORMAT          SM3.02           PAGE 1 OF 9

To "import" current volume and price data for all securities, but for
just one date, press D or W from the Master Menu.  D is for DAILY-
updated files only, and W is for WEEKLY-updated files only.  When you
see the Current Data Update screen, press I to IMPORT from an ASCII
file.  The program will ask you to specify the order in which data items
appear in the input records.  This HELP screen (user manual chapter)
explains how to make that specification.

The data to be "imported" must be in ASCII (say "askee") format, because
this is a universal format which can be understood by most communica-
tions, spreadsheet and database programs.  ASCII is a standard which
describes the bit patterns used for computer storage of individual let-
ters, digits, puncutation and other special characters.  For example the
capital letter "A" has the bit pattern 01000001.  Most personal compu-
ters can recognize ASCII.  Textual information, such as what you are
reading now, is usually stored in ASCII format.





SPECIFICATION OF ASCII FILE FORMAT                           PAGE 2 OF 9

Numbers must be in a binary format before they can be used in calcula-
tions by a computer.  The Stock Charting System stores volume, prices,
dates and other information in a binary format.  Therefore, numbers in
ASCII must be "translated" to binary before they are useful for calcula-
tions.

The ASCII file you are "importing" from is created by a spreadsheet or
communications program which is external to, and not a part of, the
Stock Charting System.

On the ASCII input file, the lines can be in any order.  The program
looks for and processes only those individual lines which contain valid
data.  Lines which contain column headings, explanatory information,
advertising, communications protocol and other things are ignored.
Normally all of the information for one security will always be on one
line.  The data items for each security can be in any order; and items
not wanted, such as dates, can be skipped.  If you use CompuServe or
another service that splits lines, see the last part of this chapter for
important information.  


SPECIFICATION OF ASCII FILE FORMAT                           PAGE 3 OF 9

Normally, the first data item the program looks for on each line is a
valid ticker symbol.  If this symbol does not exist in the catalog, or
if there is no corresponding price history file, the whole line is
ignored.  Otherwise, the program scans that same individual line from
left to right and looks for valid data items.  If the required data
items are found, they are converted to binary format.  The number values
are checked for "reasonableness" and for proper relationship, for
example high or ask >= closing price >= low or bid.  ( >= means "greater
than or equal to".)  Any error will cause that line to be discarded. 

Data items must be separated by blank spaces or other characters that
are not numbers or letters.  Either fractional or decimal values are
acceptable.  Fractions must be separated from their corresponding whole
number parts by one and only one blank space.







SPECIFICATION OF ASCII FILE FORMAT                           PAGE 4 OF 9

The program will ignore characters such as * to indicate ex-dividend.
It will also ignore any quote marks or commas that may be used to separ-
ate data items.  Thus it will accept data in the CSV, or comma-separated
value, format which is used by some database programs.  It is the res-
ponsibility of the user, in the process of using the external communica-
tions or other program of his or her choice, to make sure the required
data items are available.

Here are some examples of acceptable data, in order by stock symbol,
high, low, close and volume:

     IBM   *120        109 3/4    110 1/2   110375   (* is ignored)
     "SGAT",15.25,14,14.875,56259  (CSV format)
     fg   31.125 29 30.5 4075      (lowercase stock symbol is OK)

The program will ask you to specify the sequence in which data items
appear in the data you are "importing" into the Stock Charting System.
This sequence may vary, depending on what source the data comes from.
The required data items must be in the same order on each line they
appear on.

SPECIFICATION OF ASCII FILE FORMAT                           PAGE 5 OF 9

Each required data item is identified by a letter of the alphabet, such
as A for ask or high, B for bid or low, C for close, etc.  The sequence
in which data items appear in the input is specified by typing those
letters in a corresponding sequence, for example TABCV for ticker-high-
low-close-volume.  If you don't know the sequence, you can find out from
the documentation for the program that created the file, or by visual
inspection after displaying the file on the screen or printer.  Usually
the program that created the file also displays it. 

To skip over a data item you don't want to use, type the letter "R" if
it is a stock price (ask/bid/last/open/etc.); otherwise type the letter
"S".  In general you can use "S" to skip any data item, UNLESS it may
contain a number with a fractional value such as 2 11/16.  "S" skips
anything delimited by spaces or double quotes, so it won't work on
fractions.  That's why you have to use "R" to consistently skip over
numeric values that may or may not contain fractions.  Either "R" or "S"
will work with whole numbers and decimal values.




SPECIFICATION OF ASCII FILE FORMAT                           PAGE 6 OF 9

For example when receiving current quotes from Dow Jones Information
Services, the data items are in order by ticker symbol, bid/close, ask/
open, high, low, last, volume.  The "bid/close" is the previous day's
closing price and "ask/open" is today's opening price, which the program
does not use.  The current day's closing price is in the column labelled
"last".  Therefore, you type the letters TPRABCV to specify the data
item sequence.  You MUST specify where the stock symbol is; the program
does NOT assume it is the first item on each line. 

Use S instead of R to skip any contiguous field such as the time of day.        

Use V for volume in hundreds (the normal case).  Otherwise use U.  Which
one to use can only be determined by inspecting the data.








SPECIFICATION OF ASCII FILE FORMAT                           PAGE 7 OF 9

Not all of the aforementioned data items must be present.  The program
can use the ticker symbol, the current volume, high, low and close, and
the previous close.  However the only items that absolutely must be
available on each line are the ticker symbol and either the current
closing price (or net asset value) or the ask and bid prices.  If the
ask and bid prices are present, but not the closing price, the closing
price is set to the bid price.  If only the closing price is present,
the high and low are set equal to the close.

Data items that appear in the input data after the last item you want do
not have to be specified.  For example, assume you want to pick up only
the current closing price, and that each input line contains the time,
ticker symbol, previous close, current high-low-close and volume.  In
this case you would specify STRRRC.  The volume would be ignored.
Remember in this version of the program you MUST specify the ticker sym-
bol, and it need not be the first item in the line.  (In Release 2.54
and earlier versions, you didn't have to specify T for the ticker symbol
- the program always assumed it was the first item on each line.)



SPECIFICATION OF ASCII FILE FORMAT                           PAGE 8 OF 9

After the "translation" process is finished, the data is shown on the
screen and you can inspect it.  If you didn't get any data at all, or
you got only one or two lines, the most likely cause is the data items
are not in the same order that you specified.  You should visually
inspect both the incoming ASCII data and the resulting Stock Charting
System data to make sure everything is reasonable and hopefully correct.
Glitches on the telephone line (when receiving data through a modem),
or garbage in the data, could cause information to be lost in the trans-
lation process.  If you have persistent problems, there is a slight
possibility that you might have to use a word processor or text editor
to edit the ASCII data file to get rid of garbage, before "importing" it
into the Stock Charting System.

WARNING: The Import function does not actually update the price history
files.  You must invoke the UPDATE function to do this.  This process
is not automatic, to give you an opportunity to inspect the data first.





SPECIFICATION OF ASCII FILE FORMAT                           PAGE 9 OF 9

If you use CompuServe or any other database service which splits the in-
formation for each security among two or more lines, you have a special
problem, which this program can handle.  Use the letter G to skip to the
next line in the ASCII file.  For example, suppose your input data for
each stock looks like this:

STOCK IBM 11:54:07 EST

 DATE       CLOSE      OPEN      ASK       BID
                                HIGH       LOW      LAST      VOL (100s)

2/6/90      109 1/8    109     109 7/8   107 3/4   109 3/8     13456

To "import" this data, specify the format STGGGSRRABCV.  The first "S"
skips over the word STOCK (otherwise the program will think that is a
ticker symbol).  The T picks up the real ticker IBM.  GGG skips 3 lines,
ignoring the time and EST (you don't have to explicitly skip empty
lines).  The second S skips the date and RR skips the previous close and
today's open.  You might consider writing the format down and sticking
it to your monitor once it is working.
