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break up fields

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    break up fields

    how can you break down the field into separate entries ex:
    Mr & Mrs John Doe in 1 field , make it to a title, firs,last also some record may only contain Mr no Mrs or no first name etc.

    also, is there anyway to make a template of these things and use it for any dbf file just change the name of the dbf file example we do importing,exporting,appending, posting etc. can be done with some kind of template copying to different album etc,

    #2
    RE: break up fields

    David,

    This is why I ALWAYS insist that my customers break things down into the smallest conceivable components. It's much easier to put things together than it is to separate them. Some people, like real estate companies, even have to separate the street number from the street name in addresses.

    The FIRST thing to do is to make sure you have a good backup!!!!

    Next question to be answered: How big is the data file? If it's only a few hundred records it will probably be just as fast and possibly more accurate to just re-type them. If the data file is huge (thousands of records), it would be worthwhile to automate as much as possible. I did a 17,000 record table recently and it took almost 2 full days. Unfortunately, the time is more a function of the variability in the data than the number of records. Of course, the more records and the more people involved in the input, the more variations are likely.

    From here on, there is no easy way. You need to review the data to get an idea of what kind of variations you are working with. If the sequence is always Salutation (Mr., Mrs., etc.), First name, Middle initial (if any), Last name, Title (Jr/Sr, etc.) then it will be easier than if some records have Last name before First name.

    Next, you need to just keep reviewing the data and think through the logic. For example, you might start by looking for all names that start with "Mrs. " and make the salution field equal to "Mrs." and the existing name field gets updated to: substr( "namefield>, 6, 99). Then look for "Mrs." (no space after the period) and the name field gets updated to: substr( "namefield>, 5, 99). This may seem strange at first but I found many records that didn't have a space after the "Mrs." so you can't take anything for granted. If I had looked for "Mrs." and assumed that there would always be a space after the period then the first letter of the person's name would have been deleted in some cases. Next, you have to look for "Mrs " because some people didn't bother with the period. Similarly, you have to start with "Mrs" before "Mr". And on, and on, and on...

    Some of the Xbasic functions that may help are Substr(), Word(), Len(), Right(), Left(), Trim(), and ATC(). (I'm not sure if ATC is in V2/3 or only in V4. If not, use "upper" with the AT() function: AT( "XXX", upper() )

    EXAMPLE:
    IF len(word("namefield>,2))=2 .and. right( word("namefield>),1)="."
    "the second word must be a single letter with a period after
    it so do something to put this in the middle initial field
    and convert the existing name accordingly>
    END IF

    Hope this helps. If you decide you'd rather pay somebody than tackle it yourself, e-mail me and I'll give you a quote after seeing the data.

    Cal

    Comment


      #3
      RE: break up fields

      Also, after creating new fields for:

      Title
      FirstName
      LastName

      You can use the "Update Genie": "Break a Name into its parts"

      It works very well for most common situations where you need to break up a name field

      Comment


        #4
        RE: break up fields

        They say you learn something new every day. I sure learned something new here. I never noticed that genie before. (Wonder how much time I wasted?)

        Comment


          #5
          RE: break up fields

          Hi Cal,

          Yeh I know what you mean, I think I just discovered that genie a few monthes ago.

          I did a small test on the genie though, it didn't seem to handle the title: "Mr. & Mrs." correctly. But handled all singular titles with no problems.

          Modifying the expression generated by the genie it would be very easy to fix that problem though.

          Comment


            #6
            RE: break up fields

            We still don't know how to break up if you have 1 name that has a Mr & Mrs 1 that only has a mr or mrs also some middle inital & first name some only last names

            Comment


              #7
              RE: break up fields

              David,

              I used a very scientific technique a friend of mine used to call "visual observation". (I always assumed that it was similar to tactile observation and the opposite of blind observation - but I wonder...)

              Anyway, I never found a really good way either. After fixing the obvious, I just took my best guess at what might be logical and gave it a try. I would either (a) sort the list by something like the first or the last word, or (b)run a query to look for a certain pattern and then review the result to look for patterns that were specific enough to 'fix'. If I found patterns with only a few occurences, I simply fixed them manually and saved the 'automated' fixes for the common issues.

              The worst list I worked on had Mr., Mr, Mr. First-Last, MrFirst-Last, Mrs., Mrs, Ms., Ms, First-Last, Last-First, First-MI-Last, Last-First-MI, Esq., Pres., Pres, Pr, President, Jr., Jr, Sr., ... many, many more ... even Esq. Needless to say, it took many hours and I nearly went crazy. (My wife says I was already there so no harm was done!)

              Good luck!

              Cal

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