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VMS Help MERGE, Specification File Qualifiers, /KEY, Full Description *Conan The Librarian |
If you are sorting on the entire record using character data, you
do not need to specify your key field. Otherwise, specify a /KEY
qualifier for each of the keys, in the order of their priority.
You can sort on as many as 255 key fields.
There are three ways to use the /KEY qualifier:
o To identify the key field name.
o To identify the key field name and to specify sorting order.
In this case, enclose the field name and the order option in
parentheses.
o As a conditional qualifier, to change the order of records
in the output file. First, specify a condition name in a
/CONDITION qualifier, and set up a test for what meets
that condition. Then, specify the relative order in a /KEY
qualifier of the form:
/KEY=(IF condition-name THEN value ELSE value)
You can use any values to specify the relative order of the
records.
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