Strip Quotes form text string

[Peter.Greulich]

I have a text file with typical values as follows:

06/07/2005,"EFL 6598","-72.63","080.68"
06/07/2005,"AZK 8852","-64.00","016.68"
06/07/2005,"FJUAX 6594","-16.91","999.77"

I want to read in each line of text into xbaisc and strip the quotes.

How do I strip the quotes, when I can't quote the quote - if you know what I mean?

[ChrisHawkes]

Peter,

Have a look at file.open() , read a line in at a time to a variable, then search the variable for the " , which is CHR(34), and CHR(44) for a comma


You might find this helpful too: http://msgboard.alphasoftware.com/al...ad.php?t=22895


Chris

[Peter.Greulich]

FOR i = 1 TO vLineNos
    vLine = word(vFileData,i,crlf())
    vLine[i] = STRITRAN(vLine,chr(34))

Unforunately, I cant get that far, as the script crashes on the 2nd line above.
It's as if the quotes in the string cause the crash.
So how do I get at it?

Any thoughts?

[Peter.Greulich]

Problem Solved

I was using FILE.TO_STRING() to read in my text file. Usually that works fine, but apparently not when the file includes quotes. Actually it does read the text file in ok, because I was able to get the line count after I did. It just won't process the lines in my script. So I went back to the old fashioned method:

vF = File.open(vFileName,FILE_RO_SHARED)
while .NOT. vF.eof()
vLine = vF.read_line()
vLine = STRITRAN(vLine,chr(34))

trace.writeln(vLine)
end while
vF.close()

Which works as advertised.

[ChrisHawkes]

Peter,

Glad you solved it - Sometimes the older ways are best.

I use this all the time as I do a lot of mailshot work for companies whose data comes from a variety of different software programs. I strip out all characters that are not numbers or text before importing to a table.

Chris

[AaronBBrown]

vLine is not an array, that's why your code fails.

All you need to do is load the file into a string w/ get_From_file or file.to_string(), then run stritran on the whole file...2 lines of code in total

txt = get_from_file("filename")
txt = stritran(txt, "\"")

FOR i = 1 TO vLineNos
    vLine = word(vFileData,i,crlf())
    vLine[i] = STRITRAN(vLine,chr(34))

Unforunately, I cant get that far, as the script crashes on the 2nd line above.
It's as if the quotes in the string cause the crash.
So how do I get at it?

Any thoughts?

[Peter.Greulich]

Thanks for your help, Chris.

[Peter.Greulich]

I see. If I use a different variable name, it should work, eh? I guess that was my blind spot (or I suppose I could just double assign vLine[i])?

Thanks for pointing that out Aaron. I thought I was going nuts!

Also: thanks for the abbreviated code version. I'll use it.

[AaronBBrown]

I see. If I use a different variable name, it should work, eh? I guess that was my blind spot (or I suppose I could just double assign vLine[i])?

No, vLine, in your code, is not defined as an array. It is a character string, thus it cannot be referenced with array syntax. Although this is something I'd like to eventually see added to the language, it still would not work the way you wrote it.

[Peter.Greulich]

Aaron,

Here is my code. I think you assumed that I didn't dimension the vLine[] variable. I fact I had. But after your comment I realized that the vLine variable was conflicting with the vLine[] array variable. Below you can see I changed it to vX and it works as advertised.

vFileData = FILE.TO_STRING(vFileName)
vLineNos = w_count(vFileData,crlf())
Dim vLine[vLineNos] as C
FOR i = 1 TO vLineNos
    vX = word(vFileData,i,crlf())
    vLine[i] = STRITRAN(vX,chr(34))
    trace.writeln(vX)
next

Having said that. I will still use your snippet of:

txt = get_from_file("filename")
txt = stritran(txt, "\"")

Thanks again.

[Lenny Forziati]

You cannot use the same name for bothe an array and a different type. You will get an errorupon trying to use it the second way:

dim vline as c
dim vline[10] as c
ERROR: Variable is of different type

Aaron,

Here is my code. I think you assumed that I didn't dimension the vLine[] variable. I fact I had. But after your comment I realized that the vLine variable was conflicting with the vLine[] array variable. Below you can see I changed it to vX and it works as advertised.

vFileData = FILE.TO_STRING(vFileName)
vLineNos = w_count(vFileData,crlf())
Dim vLine[vLineNos] as C
FOR i = 1 TO vLineNos
    vX = word(vFileData,i,crlf())
    vLine[i] = STRITRAN(vX,chr(34))
    trace.writeln(vX)
next

Having said that. I will still use your snippet of:

txt = get_from_file("filename")
txt = stritran(txt, "\"")

Thanks again.

[Peter.Greulich]

Yup, that's what I found out yesterday. But I didn't understand the obvious.

Thanks, Lenny.