[TEC] more unix logfile adapter fun

tec 3.9, fixpack 1

the adapter's guide Appendix B Format specifications section (page 188~189) 
tells me that I can truncate the length of a constant by using the printf-like 
%[length]s(+|*) structure ... I just tried it and it didn't work ... here's my 
format pattern:


FORMAT PFI_Logfile
%s+|%s|%99s+|%s|%s|%s|%s|%s|%s|%s|%s|%s*
origin DEFAULT
hostname DEFAULT
severity MINOR
sub_source PRINTF("hq.apps.pfi.%s.acp", hostname)
msg_date $1
processMsgCode $2
description $3
criticality $4
application_id $5
subsys_id $6
component $7
interface $8
family $9
msg_type $10
obj_key_id $11
run_id $12
msg PRINTF("Application %s failure code %s at %s", interface, processMsgCode, 
msg_date)
END


in my previous discussion on the list, the description field ($3) was giving my 
trouble because it was a very long string with lots of embedded quotes ... so I 
am trying to simply snip off the first 99 characters because they contain some 
valuable data and the quotes don't start (usually) until well after character 
position 100 in that field.

This format compiled without a problem & events are being generated, but when 
the event gets sent to TEC, the description field has not been truncated as 
expected .. it has the full 600+ characters with all the stoopid embedded 
quotes causing the event to fail parsing again.

Has anybody had success using the character length restriction as indicated in 
the adapters guide?  Or do you see any obvious mistakes I've made here?

tia,

John Guadagnino
Gap Inc.