                 SEPARATE vs. 1.0 by Jim Groeneveld, July 1987.
                 ----------------------------------------------

STATGRAPHICS can not read ASCII (fixed formatted) data files with multiple
records (more than one record per case). In order to prepare existing data
files of such a kind for STATGRAPHICS the program SEPARATE separates records
with different record numbers or any number of records without record numbers
within data files into separate data files for each set of occurring or
corresponding record numbers. These resulting data files with one record per
case may then be read independently into STATGRAPHICS one after the other.

This utility may also be of value in preparing data files for other
(statistical) programs. Records may actually be separated into different files
based on any (numeric) field in the original file as long as the field is not
more than 3 columns wide. Fields which contain characters or only blanks or
are completely beyond EOL are treated as one discriminating mark and define one
output file (with extension .-00) alltogether. All output file names are
generated automatically. They consist of the original name and a numeric
extension corresponding to the distinguishing field contents. If no
discriminating field is specified the extensions consist of increasing values
starting with .001.  This implies that it is not allowed to input file names
with this type of three digit numerical extensions. Existing output files with
corresponding names and extensions will be overwritten without prompting!

Optionally corresponding input records are compared with regard to their
record lengths. If miscompares are found information about them are listed
in a file with the original file name and the extension .MSG.

Limitation: maximum input record length: 80 bytes (max. 80 characters per
line) (the 'prehistoric' FORTRAN compiler does not allow to handle this
number flexibly).

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