# Read work file with a variable length record

**URL:** <https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/read-work-file-with-a-variable-length-record/98131>\
**Category:** Forum\
**Tags:** Adabas-Natural, Natural, Natural-on-Mainframes\
**Created:** [August 24, 2011, 7:27am UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/read-work-file-with-a-variable-length-record/98131 "2011-08-24T07:27:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Kevin\_Turner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/22d042/32.png) [@Kevin\_Turner](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/u/Kevin_Turner)\
**Post date:** [August 24, 2011, 7:27am UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/read-work-file-with-a-variable-length-record/98131/1 "2011-08-24T07:27:59Z")

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I have a work file record I am trying to read. It is a variable length record archive of a database file over several years, so it cannot be loaded back in to Adabas easily. It contains 4 fixed fields: field1, field2, field3, field4 and 2 mu fields (field 5 p9(1:50) and field6 a4(1:50)). I’m having difficulty reading the record properly. I mostly get invalid data for numeric input field. There are no delimiters in the record. I can see a 1 byte mu-count fields in the dump of the file for field5 and field6

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**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/techcommunity/original/3X/c/d/cd19967bb605d28a72d77eb83a1cae22f3df2eb8.svg) [@system](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2021, 3:00pm UTC](https://techcommunity.softwareag.com/t/read-work-file-with-a-variable-length-record/98131/2 "2021-04-02T15:00:48Z")

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