Truncating output from a DICT item

I have a complex I-Descriptor that should never output more than 2 characters.  Therefor, I have it set to "2L".

Due to some bad data, a few records have 5-6 characters for this value.

How can I direct the dictionary item to only out 2 chars?

On Unidata, the following will return the first two characters of the result of S.GET.LAST.NAME:

SUBR("S.GET.LAST.NAME", PER.ID);@1[1,2]

------------------------------
Shawn Waldie
enterprise application developer
Rocket Forum Shared Account
Los Angeles CA US
------------------------------

I have a complex I-Descriptor that should never output more than 2 characters.  Therefor, I have it set to "2L".

Due to some bad data, a few records have 5-6 characters for this value.

How can I direct the dictionary item to only out 2 chars?

Thanks Shawn - I was hoping to solve within the I-descritpor, but SUBR is always a choice.

On Unidata, the following will return the first two characters of the result of S.GET.LAST.NAME:

SUBR("S.GET.LAST.NAME", PER.ID);@1[1,2]

------------------------------
Shawn Waldie
enterprise application developer
Rocket Forum Shared Account
Los Angeles CA US
------------------------------

Best approach is to fix the data.  You can even use a before trigger to make sure the data is the correct format.

You could just use masking in your format, "2L##".

Thanks David!  that worked like a charm.

One of my co-workers wondered about using this on a linger field, say 20...would you need to use 20l################### or is there a shorthand like MATCH uses for such things, like 20L20(A) (which by the way outputs only the "A" :-)

Depending on the nature of the I-descriptor expression, I was going to suggest the same as Shawn. It shouldn't matter if it is a SUBR expression or not. But just adding the [1,2] to the end of the final value should only display the first 2 characters of the result.

We have noticed that the 20L#20 works fine for "D" type dict items, but not for "A" type.

Is there an equivilent for that?

Example:

0001: A

0002: 07

0003: DESCRIPTION

0004:

0005:

0006:

0007:

0008:

0009: L

0010: 31

0011: 1