Re: [Quickfix-developers] MiscFeeType (139)

[Grant B. <gbi...@co...>]

After further investigation, I see I was wrong.  And I'm hesitant to
say this, but the most recent 4.4 spec seems to be in error for field
139 'MiscFeeType'.

FIX spec (Vol 1) defines char as such:
char:  Single character value, can include any alphanumeric character
or punctuation except
the delimiter.  All char fields are case sensitive (i.e. m ≠ M).

Since ASCII codes 0-12 are not alphanumeric, the spec really does mean
characters '1', '2', etc.  And yes, '10', '11', and '12' are, indeed,
impossible in this context.  You can see this erroneous definition in
the fixml.4.4.dtd document
(http://www.fixprotocol.org/specifications/fix4.4livedtd/index.html).

QuickFIX's FIX44.xml completely omits '10'-'12', as does the QuickFIX/J 4.4 API.

In FIX 5.0, this field type has been changed to 'string', so I guess
somebody noticed the error and fixed it.

So, Malinka, you were right.  You should set this field to be chars
'1'-'9'.  If you need to use values '10'-'12', you have a problem.  If
you control both the server and client, you can change '10'-'12' to
other characters, such as 'a' 'b' 'c', in the FIX44.xml file and then
recompile QuickFIX for both sides.  That might be the easiest thing to
do.

If you don't need to use values '10'-'12', then I suggest you do nothing!

-Grant


On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 6:46 PM, Malinka Rellikwodahs
<ael...@gm...> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 16:38, Grant Birchmeier
> <gbi...@co...> wrote:
>> In C++, a char can be treated like an int.  Values 10, 11, and 12 can
>> be assigned to a char without a problem.
>>
>> If you have C++ code such as "char x = 8;", then x will not be storing
>> the character "8", but the unsigned integer value 8, which is intended
>> to be interpreted as the ASCII character with code 8 (see
>> http://www.asciitable.com/).
>
> yes and 8 != '8' (56), and in QF the 139 value of "Markup" is '8' 56
> if displayed as an int.
>
> If the FIX spec expected a integral value of 8 to be interpreted as
> Backspace, then they could not have a value of 1 (Start of Header)
> which is the FIX field delimiter
>
>> In the FIX spec, value 139 is specified as a char.
>
> Which would be the a single Ascii value not an integer between 0-255
> otherwise they would have specified the Field as an integer.
>
>> Note: A char and an int are not exactly the same.  On many (most?)
>> implementations, a char is 8 bits wide, and thus can only range from
>> 0-255.
>>
>
> Also this does not answer the question of why another source would
> refer to the field as being of type Int
>