UMLS Community Date: May 26, 2011 User contribution: RRF2TAB Authors: Dr. Daniel Hinostroza, Julian Maya Purpose: changes | to using Terminal. Useful for importing large files (such as MRCONSO.RRF) into FileMaker. Works with Snow Leopard. How to: 1. Open OS X Terminal (bash) 2. Open Utilities/Activity Monitor. You'll need this to know when the script has finished replacing. Select Terminal (Process name), then choose Disk Activity. 3. Replace the relevant portions of this line, then copy and paste the line into the Terminal window: sed 's/\character_to_be_changed/new_character/g' < full_path_to_your_file.RRF > full_path_to_your_file.TAB The easy way to get the full_path_to_your_file.RRF part is to write: sed 's/\|//g' < and then drag the RRF file to where the cursor is blinking in the Terminal window. Then write > and then drag the same RRF file to where the cursor is blinking in the Terminal window. Replace the RRF extension with TAB For this example, the "character_to_be_changed" is the pipe (|). The new_character is the tab ( ), achieved in the terminal by holding down 'ctrl' and pressing 'v' and then 'i'. This should output tab-delimited fields in any RRF file. Example: sed 's/\|/ /g' < /Users/MyAccount/Desktop/umls2011aa/2011AA/META/MRCONSO.RRF > /Users/MyAccount/Desktop/umls2011aa/2011AA/META/MRCONSO.TAB 4. While the machine is happily replacing, you should see Disk Activity shoot upwards (Data read, Data written). When it stops, you can safely go to the next step. On my machine it takes less than a minute to process a large MRCONSO file. 6. Now you should have your new .TAB file next to the original RRF file, leaving the RRF untouched. 7. Finally, if you wish to import this file into FileMaker, since the RRF files doe not include a "first row contains Field names", you also need to do that manually. For MRCONSO, copy and paste the following line into Smultron or Fraise. CUI LAT TS LUI STT SUI ISPREF AUI SAUI SCUI SDUI SAB TTY CODE STR SRL SUPPRESS CVF Save the file with a .tab extension (I used UTF-8) and throw it into the FileMaker icon on the Dock. At the prompt, select "Field names" and click Continue. You'll be prompted to save the file. Now you're ready to import your large .tab file into the FileMaker file you just created using "last order" and UTF-8 as Character Set. FileMaker adjusts the field sizes and types automatically. Filemaker also indexes automatically during searches although you can change this behavior in the field options from "Automatically create indexes as needed" to "All". Let me know if a video tutorial would be of help! Dr. med. Daniel Hinostroza dhinostroza@gmail.com umlscommunity@cerebroperiferico.com