Help with Remove Word function

[Rich Hartnett]

I'm looking for an easy expression that will allow me to remove one of several words from a string. (The key words may not always exist however.)

Here is an example list:

C0DV20053
C0DV20054
C0DV20055
C0DV20056
JOHN11001000002W
BILL11001000002W

The first four are okay, but then next two need to have the words "JOHN" or "BILL" removed, leaving just the numbers or letters after the name remaining.

Thanks,
Rich

[Steve Workings]

Re: Help with Remove Word function

Does this help?:

txt = <<%a%
C0DV20053
C0DV20054
C0DV20055
C0DV20056
JOHN11001000002W
BILL11001000002W
%a%

remove_list = <<%a%
John
Bill
%a%

for each foo in remove_list
	txt = stritran(txt, foo)
next

msgbox(txt)

[Rich Hartnett]

Re: Help with Remove Word function

Steve can this be done in a field rule?

[Steve Workings]

Re: Help with Remove Word function

When it takes a bit more than a simple expression, you can always make it more manageable by writing your own UDF. So for this one, the UDF could be:

FUNCTION Special_WordRemove AS C (StringIn AS C, RemoveList AS C )
	
for each foo in RemoveList
	StringIn = stritran(Stringin, foo)
next

Special_WordRemove = StringIn
	
END FUNCTION

With that ready, you just need to feed in the StringIn and RemoveList. Here's a test script that does that:

txt = <<%a%
C0DV20053
C0DV20054
C0DV20055
C0DV20056
JOHN11001000002W
BILL11001000002W
'%a%

remove_list = <<%a%
John
Bill
'%a%

result = Special_WordRemove(txt, remove_list)
msgbox(result)

[Stan Mathews]

Re: Help with Remove Word function

Steve,

Did you avoid the use of stritran_multi() for a reason?

? stritran_multi(txt,remove_list,"")
= C0DV20053
C0DV20054
C0DV20055
C0DV20056
11001000002W
11001000002W

[Rich Hartnett]

Re: Help with Remove Word function

Stan I only have three words that have to be removed.
(Hyattsville, Edmonston, Landover Hills)

Can all that be written into a field rule expression without a separate list?

[Stan Mathews]

Re: Help with Remove Word function

Yes.

txt = <<%a%
Charlotte
Atlanta
Savannah
Hyattsville
Edmonston
Landover Hills
%a%

? stritran_multi(txt,"Hyattsville"+crlf()+"Edmonston"+crlf()+"Landover Hills","")
= Charlotte
Atlanta
Savannah

[Rich Hartnett]

Re: Help with Remove Word function

Sorry Stan for sounding kind of dumb on this one, but is this the expression all by itself:

stritran_multi(txt,"Hyattsville"+crlf()+"Edmonston"+crlf()+"Landover Hills","")

I tried that in the field that is getting the name removed, and I get a message saying that it is an invalid or incomplete expression.

[Stan Mathews]

Re: Help with Remove Word function

I tried that in the field that is getting the name removed

Sorry, don't have a clue what that means.

Your original post seemed to indicate that you had a list of values somewhere. If you are dealing with a single field you just need to refer to the fieldname. Perhaps if you explain what you are trying to do I can offer better advice.

[Rich Hartnett]

Re: Help with Remove Word function

Sorry about that Stan, bad choice of words. The attached screenshot should help clarify things a bit.

Notice the field in this table called "controlnumber." It contains citation numbers that are "just numbers/letters," and some that have the word "EDMONSTON" in front of them. (The ones with the "name" are warnings, and the others are actual traffic citations.)

The field to the right of this one is called "citationno." In this field I want to duplicate the data in the "controlnumber" field, but without the "EDMONSTON, HYATTSVILLE or LANDOVER HILLS" names.RemoveWord.jpg

And I was hoping I could do it with a simple field rule, by putting your expression in the "citationno" field.

I hope this makes more sense.

[Stan Mathews]

Re: Help with Remove Word function

Make citationno a calculated field with the expression

stritran_multi(controlnumber,"Hyattsville"+crlf()+"Edmonston"+crlf()+"Landover Hills","")

[Rich Hartnett]

Re: Help with Remove Word function

Exactly!!!!! That works like a champ!

I knew there had to be an "easy" way to do it, but every method I tried with Remove_Word didn't work the way I needed it to.

Thank you very much!

[Stan Mathews]

Re: Help with Remove Word function

You're not dealing with words, words are separated by some sort of delimiter like a space, comma, crlf() etc. You wanted to remove certain character sequences from a "word".

[Rich Hartnett]

Re: Help with Remove Word function

Ahhh, that would explain my frustration.

Again, thanks for the help.