I understand that edifact syntax for the segment terminator is character " ' ". I have a situation where I receive an edifact file with no segment terminators
example instead of IFT+3+XYZCOMPANY AVAILABILITY' my segments ends like IFT+3+XYZCOMPANY AVAILABILITY without the terminator.
I would highly appreciate anyone who could explain to me the theory behind this.
A segment terminator is always required. If there truly is no segment terminator, the EDI document is not valid by the EDIFACT standard.
It may be that they are actually using a CR/LF as the segment terminator. Although not good practice or valid EDIFACT, if you can set your software to accept a CR/LF as a segment terminator it should solve your issue.
To add to this, a segment terminator can be defined in the UNA segment eg. UNA:+.? ' where the 6th character will be the segment terminator. This is not required for a valid EDIFACT document.