Informix Error -1361: Illegal TEXT or BYTE file name. Null names are not permitted.

Cause and resolution

Illegal TEXT or BYTE file name. Null names are not permitted.

The BYTE or TEXT variable has been located in a file using the 4GL statement LOCATE. However, the filename that is given for the variable is a null string. Because the file does not exist, 4GL cannot do anything with it.

Oninit® Troubleshooting Guidance

Reasons / Common Causes

-1361 fires when a LOCATE statement is given an empty string as the target filename for a BYTE/TEXT variable — per the official guidance, a file can't exist with a null name.

LOCATE given an empty string for the filename, per the official guidance — the direct, only cause, typically from an unset or uninitialized variable supplying the filename.

Solutions / Resolution

Supply a genuine, non-empty filename to LOCATE, per the official guidance.
Check the source of the filename variable for why it evaluated to an empty string, if it wasn't a literal.

Examples

LOCATE with an empty filename

DEFINE v_filename CHAR(50);
LOCATE v_text_var IN FILE v_filename;
-- -1361: v_filename was never assigned, so it's empty

Corrected

LET v_filename = "/tmp/staging.txt";
LOCATE v_text_var IN FILE v_filename;

Diagnostic Checks

Check the value of the filename variable/expression passed to LOCATE at the point of failure.

Related Errors / Related Topics

No closely related error codes are cross-referenced for -1361 in this set yet.

LOCATE was given an empty filename — check the source of the filename variable.