Preview Setup Dialog Box (WzPreview)

This dialog box is used to specify which non-numerics are filtered out of the file as it is previewed.

Read <all> records—Enter the number of records to read, or enter the word “all” to read all the records in the file.

Ignore: Blank lines—Select this option to have WzPreview skip over blank lines in the file. Otherwise, blank lines (when read with a fixed FORTRAN or C format) will cause blocks of unwanted zeros in the import variable.

Ignore: Lines containing text in numeric fields—Select this option to have WzPreview ignore any record that contains one or more characters of text inside numeric fields.

Ignore: These characters—Some spreadsheets, when working with financial data, insert commas (,), slashes (/), and dollar signs ($) in with the numbers. Be sure to have WzPreview filter these characters out of the numbers, or else they will be interpreted as lines with text in numeric fields, and possibly ignored.

note	Be sure not to filter characters that were used in the file as separators. separators enable WzPreview to discern where one data value ends and another one begins.

Ignore: Lines containing specific strings—Tell PV‑WAVE to skip over lines containing a particular text string. By default, if this option is selected, WzPreview searches for the words “Total” and “Subtotal”, or “----” (four hyphens in a row). Any occurrence of the word or phrase is recognized; the search is not case-sensitive.

Replace <value1> with <value2>—Enter a string used in the file to represent missing data values in the Replace field. Each matched string is converted to a numeric constant that you enter in the with field, such as –9999.0. PV‑WAVE is unable to have both textual and numeric information in the same variable, so all matched text strings are converted to the numbers that you enter.

OK—Return to the WzPreview Tool. When the file is read, filter out (or check for) the specified combinations of blank lines, special characters, and so forth, and make the specified substitutions.

note

If you ask WzPreview to search for a specific text string (or one or more separator or monetary characters) as it scans the file, overall performance is degraded. Expect WzPreview to take longer as it reads files when it is looking for non-numerics to filter out.

You can also use the Missing Values portion of this dialog box to make a universal substitution of one value for another value. For example, you might want to go through and change all 0’s to some other value, say 0.0015.