totext

Converts data or file to text. The syntax is

totext(filename[, args])
   totext(data[, args])

This function will convert the contents of a file, if the argument given is an indirect, or else the result of the expression, and convert it to text. It does this by calling the program anytotx, which must be in the path. The anytotx program (obtained from Thunderstone) will handle PDF as well as many other file formats.

As of version 2.06.935767000 the totext command will take an optional second argument which contains arguments to the anytotx program. See the documentation for anytotx for details on its arguments.

SELECT  FILENAME, totext(FILENAME)
     FROM    DOCUMENTS
     WHERE   DOCID = 'JT09113' ;

The results are:

FILENAME            totext(FILENAME)
  /docs/JT09113.pdf   This is the text contained in the document
  that has an id of JT09113.