[Novalug] Spreadsheet Problem

[Jon LaBadie]

On Thu, Apr 08, 2010 at 07:14:58PM -0400, Dan Arico wrote:
> Somebody sent me a mailing list as a csv file. It opens just fine, either as a 
> spreadsheet or a text file. My problem stems from the fact that zip codes are 
> not being treated consistently. A nine digit zip with a hyphen in it is 
> treated as a string. A five digit zip is treated as a number. I need a way to 
> force it to be treated as a string.
> 
> Any ideas?

In awk, strings can be concatenated by separating them with a space

  x = 00123		# a number or a string ?
  x = 00123 + 0		# forced to be considered a number
  x = 00123  ""		# forced to be considered a string

Don't know if your application has something similar, i.e.
a string concatenation operator.

jl
-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon at jgcomp.com
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