I had a request the other day to strip out invalid characters from a series of strings.  The easiest way you can do this is to put a list of invalid characters into a string and then use the Translate function to set those characters to null.

In my code I have a Defined variable called null which = ”


Let $invalid_characters = '!!@#$%^&*()-_+=[]|\:;",.<>?''' || chr(123) || chr(125)
Let $newstring = Translate($oldstring,$invalid_characters,{null})


You will notice that there are two exclamation points in the invalid character string, and this is because one exclamation by itself denotes a comment. As well there is three end quotes which allows for a single quote to be put into the string and then end the string. The Chr function allows you to enter in a ascii specific character, which in this case 123 = { and 125 = } — If you try to put the curly bracket into the string it will try to look for a defined variable to insert and it will generate an error. You can use the ascii value to control other characters as well, here is a lookup table to reference from lookuptables.com

Ascii lookup table

An application engine program can be traced by simply changing the trace parameters in the process scheduler configuration file, however, that requires the process scheduler to be brought down and it will trace every application engine ran through the process scheduler.  However, you can append those trace parameters to the process definition and it will trace the individual process.  Navigate to the process definition (Home>PeopleTools>Process Scheduler>Processes –> Override Options)  in the parameter list select append and enter in -TRACE xxx -TOOLSTRACEPC xxx -TOOLSTRACESQL xxx, where xxx is the bit reference based on the needs of the trace. So for example if you wanted options 1, 2, and 128 for trace, you add 1+2+128 = 131, and you enter 131 as the trace parameter: -TRACE 131.

-TRACE parameters:

-TOOLSTRACEPC parameters

-TOOLSTRACESQL parameters

Note that output from the -TRACE flag goes to the application engine trace (.AET) file. Output from the -TOOLSTRACEPC and -TOOLSTRACESQL output goes to the PeopleTools trace file (.TRC).