Using the 'Interleave' option in Concatenate Files

A new option called 'Interleave' has been added to the Concatenate Files utility.

To use this option, start Concatenate and select your files as usual, then select the 'Interleave' checkbox on the left:

This new option allows you to concatenate the MARC records from different files together in an interleaved order.

For example, if you have three source files named A, B, and C, and each file contains three records, the resulting MARC file in an 'interleaving' concatenation would contain nine records in this order:

A-B-C-A-B-C-A-B-C

whereas, in a normal concatenation, the results file would contain the nine MARC records in this order:

A-A-A-B-B-B-C-C-C

If there are an unequal number of records in the source files, the program maintains the interleaving order until all records from a file are exhausted. For example, given the three files A, B, C, where file A contains 3 records, file B contains 2 records, and file C contains 4 records, the resulting MARC file in an 'interleaving' concatenation would contain nine records in this order:

A-B-C-A-B-C-A-C-C

whereas, in a normal concatenation, the results file would contain the nine MARC records in this order:

A-A-A-B-B-C-C-C-C

The ordering of the source files in an interleave operation might be important, depending on what you are going to do with the results. Use drag and drop to put the files in the order that you want.

Interleave requires at least two source files. Interleave is only available if all of the sourcefiles contain MARC records.

As this option creates an unusual results file, you will always receive an 'Are you sure' pop-up when the Interleave option is checked.