Patent ID: 7188115

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of editing data having a fixed format on a computer system that uses data having a non-fixed format such that after being edited, the data continues to have the fixed format, the method comprising the steps of: receiving, by the computer system, a data byte array, the data byte array having the non-fixed format and including data for editing a fixed-length statement; determining the fixed format encoding of the fixed-length statement by determining a number of bytes in each of a plurality of fixed-length fields that comprise the fixed-length statement; determining a number of bytes in the fixed-length statement; creating a data string from the data byte array, the data string being encoded using the determined fixed format encoding, given a starting byte position and the number of bytes in the fixed-length statement; assigning an attribute to each byte of the data string; and editing the fixed-length statement using the data string.