Sample Input and Output: Invoice

As in Chapter 7, we're going to use invoices from Big Daddy's Gourmet Cocoa for our example. However, Big Daddy has now upgraded to a more capable order management and bookkeeping system. The new system supports a more comprehensive flat, hierarchical file structure than the CSV formats supported by the previous system.

The simple invoice example is composed of two levels of record groups. The group at the top level is the invoice itself, consisting of a header record, ship to address, one or more line item groups, and a summary record. The second group, the line item group, contains a line item record and an item description record.

This particular file has variable length records. Although Big Daddy's system ...

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