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Division 2.4 The computer files must have the following characteristics:

United Kingdom

Original text. Later amendments are not shown.

  1. 1..

    The first record in the file (header row) contains the file description. The field names comprise an ‘F’ followed by the field number used in Annex I (the ‘X-table’). Only field names existing in this Annex are allowed.

  2. 2..

    The following records in the file are data (data rows), in the order indicated by the first record describing the file structure.

  3. 3..

    The fields are separated by a semicolon (‘;’). The header row and data rows shall all contain the same number of semicolons. In the data rows, empty fields appear as a double semicolon (‘;;’) within the record, or as a single semicolon (‘;’) at the end of the record.

  4. 4..

    Records vary in length. Each record ends with a code ‘CR LF’ or ‘Carriage Return — Line Feed’ (in hexadecimal: ‘0D 0A’). The header row never ends on a ‘;’. Data rows only end on a ‘;’ if the last field is empty.

  5. 5..

    The file is in ASCII coding according to following table. Other codes (such as EBCDIC, TAR, ZIP, etc.) are not accepted:

    codeMember State
    ISO 8859-1BE, DK, DE, ES, FR, IE, IT, LU, NL, AT, PT, FI, SE and GB
    ISO 8859-2CZ, HU, PL, SI and SK
    ISO 8859-3MT
    ISO 8859-7GR and CY
    ISO 8859-13EE, LV and LT
  6. 6..

    Numeric fields:

    1. (a)

      Decimal separator: ‘.’

    2. (b)

      The symbol (‘+’ or ‘-’) appears on the far left, followed immediately by the figures. For positive numbers, the ‘+’ sign is optional.

    3. (c)

      Fixed number of decimals (the details are set out in the Annex III hereto).

    4. (d))

      No spaces between digits. No spaces or other signs between thousands.

  7. 7..

    Date field: ‘YYYYMMDD’ (year in four digits, month in two digits, day in two digits).

  8. 8..

    EAGGF budget code (field F109) ABB-format without spaces: ‘999999999999999’ (where ‘9’ stands for any figure between 0 and 9).

  9. 9..

    Quotation marks (‘’) are not allowed at the beginning or at the end of the records. The semicolon field separator ‘;’ must not be used in data in text format.

  10. 10..

    All fields: no spaces at the beginning or end of a field.

  11. 11..

    Files satisfying these rules will look like the following (example for financial year 2004):

    • F100;F101;F106;F107;F108;F109

    • BE01;154678;+152.50;EUR;20030715;050201011000001

    • BE01;024578;-1000.00;EUR;20030905;050208031502002

    • BE01;154985;9999.20;EUR;20030101;050205011100001

    • BE01;100078;+152.75;EUR;20030331;050208091515002

    • BE01;215452;+0.50;EUR;20030615;050201011000002 (Please note +0.50 and not +.50)

    • BE01;123456;21550.15;EUR;20030101;050805013810001

    • etc.

    • (other data rows with the fields in the same order).