PAF uses standard ASCII characters. This guide outlines which characters are used. In particular, which special characters may be used under certain conditions.
Characters
Alpha characters –Upper & Lower Case
ALLAllowed as part of a text string or as single characters.
Ampersand
ALLAllowed in any position in the Organisation, Department and DP Alias Fields. But restricted to certain positions in Sub Building & Building Name fields to replace the word ‘AND’.
Apostrophe
ALLCan only be used between alpha characters to define names such as O’Neill or plurals such as James’s.
Asterisk
ORGANISATION, DEPARTMENT, DP ALIAS FIELDS ONLYnot allowed at the end of entries as this may cause problems with wildcard searches of data.
Brackets
ALLMust always be a pair and must be preceded / followed by a space.
Comma
NONEcan be misread in data extract and CSV files and so is not allowed.
Full Stop
ALLThe use of the full stop is restricted in Sub Building, Building Name and DP Alias fields. Can only be used to abbreviate Saint to St. and should always be followed by a space. It can also have limited use in the Organisation field.
Hash
ORGANISATION FIELD ONLYHyphen
ALLThe use of the hyphen is restricted in Sub Building & Building Name fields. Also must be part of a building number range or a double barrelled name and must not be preceded or followed by spaces.
Numerics
ALLAllowed as part of a text string or as single characters. Although a single zero is allowed in either the Building Name OR Sub Building Name fields, it is not allowed in both simultaneously.
Quotation marks - single
NONEcan be misread in data extract and CSV files and so is not allowed (except for apostrophe entries).
Quotation marks - double
NONEcan be misread in data extract and CSV files and so is not allowed.
All Other standard ASCII Characters
ORGANISATION, DP ALIAS FIELDS ONLYAll other characters are allowed to form a company name in the Organisation Name field or the DP Alias field only.