Fixed-Width Positions File (TXT)
A classic fixed-width text extract with documented column positions — for COBOL-style / mainframe importer tests.
ID NAME AMOUNT
001 Ada Lovelace 001250
002 Ben Garcia 000320
003 Chen Wei 002900
Specifications
- Format
- fixed-width
- Columns
- ID(0-3), NAME(4-18), AMOUNT(19-24)
- Rows
- 3
What is a .txt file?
TXT is a plain-text file containing unformatted character data with no styling or structure beyond line breaks. Its interpretation depends on character encoding, most commonly UTF-8, and on line-ending convention. It is the most universal and portable text container.
How to use this file
Use an example TXT to test encoding detection, line-ending (LF versus CRLF) handling, and any tool that reads or streams raw text input.
How to use this file for testing
“Fixed-Width Positions File (TXT)” is a deterministic Novus Examples fixture for CSV parsing, Data import, Encoding detection. Clean and deliberately messy CSVs — quoted commas, embedded newlines, ragged rows, odd delimiters, and encodings.
Documented properties for this file: 3 rows · fixed-width. Compare results against paired or grouped companions on this page when present (clean↔damaged, searchable↔scanned, or format twins) so scores stay reproducible across runs.
Download the file once, keep the path stable in CI or local scripts, and treat the spec table as the contract: dimensions, seeds, field lists, and roles are intentional. Corrupt or invalid samples are labelled as such — expect parsers to fail loudly rather than silently accept them.
Data fixtures document their exact quirks — delimiters, encodings, null handling, schema, and row counts — in the spec table. Point your parser or importer at the file and assert it handles the documented edge cases; clean and deliberately-messy siblings make before/after diffs straightforward.
Feed the file to your parser and assert it handles the documented quirks — quoted delimiters, embedded newlines, ragged rows, or invalid syntax; the valid↔invalid distinction is labelled in the title.
Related files
- csvCSV — UTF-8 with BOMA CSV prefixed with a UTF-8 BOM (EF BB BF) and accented / CJK cells — for testing BOM-aware importers.
- csvCSV — Hash Comment LinesA CSV with # comment lines mixed among data — common in scientific exports; tests comment skipping.
- csvCSV — ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1)A Latin-1 CSV with high-bit accented characters — for legacy 8-bit charset detection.
- csvCSV — Mixed CRLF and LFA CSV that mixes CRLF and LF row endings within one file — newline normalisation fixture.
- csvCSV — Pipe DelimiterA pipe-delimited (| ) tabular file — for testing non-comma delimiter autodetection.
- csvCSV — Semicolon Delimiter (EU)European-style CSV using semicolons as delimiters and comma decimals — a common locale edge case.
Generated by generation/data_encodings_wave_c.py. Free for any use, no attribution required — license.