Ticker names longer than 12 or 14 characters

[Samri]

Salam Mansoor,

The message below is about a year old, and only now did I come across
the problem Stock Guy speaks of.

There is indeed a problem with ticker names that are longer than 12 or
14 characters, but I think part of the problem is due to the Metastock
format itself.

If you convert ASCII data to Metastock using The Downloader (which is
the conversion utility that comes with Metastock), The Downloader will
truncate ticker names to 14 characters maximum. If afterwards you feed
The Downloader a text file that has the same tickers but with extra
letters added to the name of each ticker, it will STILL truncate the
ticker name to 14 characters, and then treat the price data as valid.

Example:
Say your ticker is called "IBM.SSF.2010.JUN" (that's 16 characters).
When you first process the data in The Downloader,
the ticker symbol is truncated to "IBM.SSF.2010.J" (only the first 14
characters)
Here, the price data is read correctly.

If afterwards you feed The Downloader data for a ticker called
"IBM.SSF.2010.JUN.ABCD.BLAHBLAH"
(i.e. a lot more than 14 characters), here's what happens:
The Downloader STILL truncates the ticker symbol to 14 characters, and
reads it as "IBM.SSF.2010.J"
dropping all the extra characters.

Best of all, the ticker data is read in correctly, and added to
the .DAT file of IBM.SSF.2010.J.

Now let's compare that with using asc2ms:
Even in the first time you process the data, asc2ms will read only 12
characters of the ticker symbol.
But the asc2ms utility does NOT read the data correctly, or build the
database correctly.
For each DATE in the ascii file, it creates a NEW ticker symbol.
So if I feed it price data from 30 days, it will create 30 ticker
symbols,
each one called 'IBM.SSF.2010' (asc2ms seems to take only 12
characters, not 14)
and each one having the price data for one day.

As a workaround, I'm thinking of writing a little script (in Python)
that will rename my tickers.
But this is something to look into when you consider releasing the
next version

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Stock Guy <stockgu...@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 25 2009, 4:31 pm
Subject: Long Ticker name causing MS database to curropt
To: metastockcmdlineutils


Dear Mr. Mansoor,

I have been using your asc2ms utility for quite some time now. Its a
awesome
and one of its kind utility. Thanks for developing that.
Although its perfect but I have a Question for you.

1. Is there a Limitation on Ticker Name Length ? When i try to convert
Ascii
data to MS format and the Ticker name is long It spoils the database.
2. The Script name Field also truncates the name.

Can you please help me out with these 2 questions. I hope this time my
question will not go un noticed.

Thanks a lot for your Time.

Regards
Stockguy

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