# `HL7v2.RawMessage`
[🔗](https://github.com/Balneario-de-Cofrentes/hl7v2/blob/v3.10.1/lib/hl7v2/raw_message.ex#L1)

Represents a parsed HL7v2 message in raw form.

The raw message preserves the structure and content of the original message —
no type coercion, no validation, no data loss. Round-tripping is canonical:
line endings are normalized to CR and a trailing CR is always present, so
`parse(text) |> encode()` produces the canonical wire form, which may differ
from the input only in line-ending normalization.

## Structure

Each segment is a tuple `{name, fields}` where:

- `name` is a binary segment identifier (e.g., `"MSH"`, `"PID"`)
- `fields` is an ordered list of field values, starting from the first field
  after the segment name

### Field Value Representation

Field values use nested lists to represent the HL7v2 delimiter hierarchy:

- **Simple field**: a binary string — `"Smith"`
- **Components**: a list of binaries — `["Smith", "John", "", "Dr"]`
- **Repetitions**: a list of component-lists — `[["12345", "", "", "MRN"], ["67890", "", "", "SSN"]]`
- **Sub-components**: lists nested within components as needed

For MSH, field 1 is always the field separator character as a single-byte binary
(e.g., `"|"`), and field 2 is the encoding characters as a literal string
(e.g., `"^~\\&"`).

# `field_value`

```elixir
@type field_value() :: binary() | [binary()] | [[binary()]] | [[[binary()]]]
```

# `t`

```elixir
@type t() :: %HL7v2.RawMessage{
  segments: [{binary(), [field_value()]}],
  separators: HL7v2.Separator.t(),
  type: {binary(), binary()} | {binary(), binary(), binary()}
}
```

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*Consult [api-reference.md](api-reference.md) for complete listing*