Datastage - ExecuteCommandActivty - ParamValue/LimitValue not Appropriate [Solved]

Being new to Datastage, I had myself pulling my hair out with this issue. 

Scenario: We have a file with a date in linux server which would act as the Extract Date for one of our ETL sources. 

So say we have this file, extractdate.txt in a specific folder in Linux Server and would contain a datetimestamp value like '01-JAN-2019 03:47:30 AM'. 

We would then read from this flat file using the 'Execute Command' activity and pass it on to  a parameter (ExtractDate) in the next sequential job activity load in a Sequencer Job. Something like below, 

Datastage Sequencer Job

Issue: The problem with the job now was that I was not able to successfully set the parameter in JobActivity with the output from the Execute Command Activity Step. 

Code in ExecuteCommand Activity was a simple cat command as below, 

cat /location/extractdate.txt

The output of the same, I am trying to write into a parameter in the Job_Activity object property as below,

While I try to execute with the above setup, I am facing the error below,

Error calling DSSetParam(prmCNIRTP), code=-4 [ParamValue/Limitvalue is not appropriate]

Solution: The solution is to rap the value expression in Job Activity as below instead of how I have given in the screenshot above,

EReplace(Execute_Command_0.$CommandOutput,@FM,"") 

This solved it for me. The above statement removes any special characters in the flat file. Special characters are highly likely when you read from flat files. 

References: 

1. https://tutel.me/c/programming/questions/15089213/paramvaluelimitvalue+is+not+appropriate+error+while+using+trim+function+in+datastage