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[Aslan]

Anyone had any luck parsing fixed width strings?

[Dr. Dread]

Are you thinking of strings with fixed-width fields? Then @substr() should work fine...

Greetz
Dread

[Aslan]

My problem is that I don't know the widths. I'm importing foreign data.

Is there a way to detect the widths? Plus each field probably has a different width.

What I'm trying to do is get data from a command line app that outputs in fixed width table format. It seems that for each column it uses the widest
entry in that column plus a certain amount of blank space to determine the width. At first I though it used tabs but trying to parse it using @tab() as a field separator doesn't work.

I even tried using the String.dll

%A = @string(parse,%%item,1,@tab(),1)
%B = @string(parse,%%item,2,@tab(),1)
...etc

This didn't work either

[Dr. Dread]

Of course you need to find out what it used as blankspace chars, otherwise you will not be able to parse
the content if fields are of variable width. Step through a line and let @ASC() tell you what's in there.

Greetz
Dread

[Aslan]

They're all spaces @chr(32)

[Serge]

could you use the idea that if it has more than, say, 2 or 3 spaces then it is the delimiter?

eg. if a section has more than, say, 3 spaces, replace that section with a | and then parse it using | as the delimiter

just an idea

serge

[uvedese]

Hi Aslan.

You can use my argDSU.dsu...

SINTAXIS

@arg(count,<argumentos>,[<carácter separador>])
@arg(item,<argumentos>,<nº del argumento>,[<carácter separador>])
@arg(extract,<argumentos>,[<carácter separador>])
@arg(delete,<argumentos>,<nº del argumento>,[<carácter separador>])
@arg(insert,<argumentos>,<nº del argumento>,<argumento a insertar>,[<separador>])
@arg(put,<argumentos>,<número del argumento>,<argumento sustituto>,[<separador>])
@arg(position,<argumentos>,<número del argumento>,[<separador>])

download this from:
http://vds.uvedese.es/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=130&Itemid=52


visit: http://www.uvedese.es

[Aslan]

What would you suggest I use for the Character separator?

[uvedese]

Test to find a sequence of characters that is repeated. If the size of the fields is fixed that sequence each certain number of characters will repeat...

It can give result

[Skit3000]

You might try Dr. Dread's string.dll to do this. I have not tested this code, but I think it might work for you. Be sure to create a little loop to parse the output code of your command line program line by line.