Re: Purge funny characters

#1

depends on your version of pick

SPACES = STR(' ',LEN(FUNNYCHARS))
CONVERT FUNNYCHARS TO SPACES IN NAME
NAME = TRIM(NAME)

NOTE: you may not even need to use the SPACES logic try
CONVERT FUNNYCHARS TO '' IN NAME

Rich

diets wrote:

Quote:

Hi all

I need to remove funny characters from a string, and presently do it
as follows:

NAME = 'THIS IS THE STRING WITH )(*&*& THE FUNNY && CHARACTERS @#
IN IT'
FUNNYCHARS = '!`~@#$%^&*()_-+={[}]|\"' : "':;<,>.?/"
FOR CHARS = 1 TO LEN(FUNNYCHARS)
FC = FUNNYCHARS[CHARS,1]
CONVERT FC TO ' ' IN NAME
NEXT VAL
NAME = TRIM(NAME)

Is there a way to do It more efficiently?

Any comment will be appreciated

Diets

#2

CONVERT FUNNYCHARS TO "" IN NAME
*NAME = TRIM(NAME)

Regards,

Grigory

#3

diets wrote:

Quote:

Hi all

I need to remove funny characters from a string, and presently do it
as follows:

NAME = 'THIS IS THE STRING WITH )(*&*& THE FUNNY && CHARACTERS @#
IN IT'
FUNNYCHARS = '!`~@#$%^&*()_-+={[}]|\"' : "':;<,>.?/"
FOR CHARS = 1 TO LEN(FUNNYCHARS)
FC = FUNNYCHARS[CHARS,1]
CONVERT FC TO ' ' IN NAME
NEXT VAL
NAME = TRIM(NAME)

Is there a way to do It more efficiently?

Any comment will be appreciated

Diets

Perhaps instead of trying to define all "funny" characters, you'd be
better off served by defining all "good" characters.

I can't test the following code, (the machine I'm on right now doesn't
have Pick/Universe/etc), but it should be pretty close to compilable.

* Initialization
GOOD.CHARS = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
GOOD.CHARS := 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
GOOD.CHARS := '0123456789'
GOOD.CHARS := " " ;* Space

* Get/define string to clean up.
NAME = 'THIS IS THE STRING WITH )(*&*& THE FUNNY && CHARACTERS @#IN IT'

* Clean it.
TEMP.BAD.CHARS = NAME
CONVERT GOOD.CHARS TO "" IN TEMP.BAD.CHARS
IF (TEMP.BAD.CHARS) THEN
CONVERT TEMP.BAD.CHARS TO "" IN NAME
END
*
NAME = TRIM(NAME) ;* Space legit; multiple spaces aren't.

--
Allen Egerton
aegerton at pobox dot com

#4

How about:

subroutine clean.sub(string)
* remove bad characters from a string/record/whatever
bad.chars = ""
for n = 1 to 31
bad.chars := char(n)
next n
for n = 128 to 250
bad.chars := char(n)
next n
convert bad.chars to "" in string
return

/Scott Ballinger
Pareto Corporation
Edmonds WA USA
206 8713 6006

#5

Not next to a box at the moment, but experiment with:

NAME = OCONV(NAME,'MCAN')

That'll return letters and numbers. May munge spaces tho...

Ed

"diets" <diets (AT) homemail (DOT) co.za> wrote

Quote:

Hi all

I need to remove funny characters from a string, and presently do it
as follows:

NAME = 'THIS IS THE STRING WITH )(*&*& THE FUNNY && CHARACTERS @#
IN IT'
FUNNYCHARS = '!`~@#$%^&*()_-+={[}]|\"' : "':;<,>.?/"
FOR CHARS = 1 TO LEN(FUNNYCHARS)
FC = FUNNYCHARS[CHARS,1]
CONVERT FC TO ' ' IN NAME
NEXT VAL
NAME = TRIM(NAME)

Is there a way to do It more efficiently?

Any comment will be appreciated

Diets

#6

On Feb 27, 10:40 am, "diets" <d... (AT) homemail (DOT) co.za> wrote:

Quote:

Hi all

I need to remove funny characters from a string, and presently do it
as follows:

NAME = 'THIS IS THE STRING WITH )(*&*& THE FUNNY && CHARACTERS @#
IN IT'
FUNNYCHARS = '!`~@#$%^&*()_-+={[}]|\"' : "':;<,>.?/"
FOR CHARS = 1 TO LEN(FUNNYCHARS)
FC = FUNNYCHARS[CHARS,1]
CONVERT FC TO ' ' IN NAME
NEXT VAL
NAME = TRIM(NAME)

Is there a way to do It more efficiently?

Any comment will be appreciated

Diets

Alcohol is a toxin!

#7

On Feb 27, 5:40 am, "diets" <d... (AT) homemail (DOT) co.za> wrote:

Quote:

Hi all

I need to remove funny characters from a string, and presently do it
as follows:

NAME = 'THIS IS THE STRING WITH )(*&*& THE FUNNY && CHARACTERS @#
IN IT'
FUNNYCHARS = '!`~@#$%^&*()_-+={[}]|\"' : "':;<,>.?/"
FOR CHARS = 1 TO LEN(FUNNYCHARS)
FC = FUNNYCHARS[CHARS,1]
CONVERT FC TO ' ' IN NAME
NEXT VAL
NAME = TRIM(NAME)

Is there a way to do It more efficiently?

Any comment will be appreciated

Diets

This looks at the string delimited substrings instead of each
character

NEW.NAME = ''
FOR X = 1 TO DCOUNT(NAME,' ')
STR = OCONV(FIELD(NAME,' ',X),'MCAN')
NEW.NAME = NEW.NAME:' ':STR
NEXT X
NEW.NAME = TRIM(NEW.NAME)
CRT NEW.NAME

Cliff

#8

diets wrote:

Quote:

Hi all

I need to remove funny characters from a string, and presently do it

Take a look at OCONV(FUNNY.CHARS,'MCP')

Art

#9

Just curious: you have CONVERT(NAME, GOOD.CHARS, '') to convert all
good.chars to nulls. Which system has this syntax, because on UV its:
CONVERT(GOOD.CHARS, '',NAME)?

I won't ask why you're replace "good" characters with nulls to eliminate
them

Chandru
"Terry Layne" <usenet (AT) laynesoftware (DOT) com> wrote

Quote:

On Tue, 27 Feb 2007 13:34:38 +0000, Allen Egerton wrote:

diets wrote:
Hi all

I need to remove funny characters from a string, and presently do it
as follows:
[snip]

* Initialization
GOOD.CHARS = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
GOOD.CHARS := 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
GOOD.CHARS := '0123456789'
GOOD.CHARS := " " ;* Space

* Get/define string to clean up.
NAME = 'THIS IS THE STRING WITH )(*&*& THE FUNNY && CHARACTERS @#IN IT'

[snip]

After you get GOOD.CHARS you can do

NAME = TRIM(CONVERT(NAME, CONVERT(NAME, GOOD.CHARS, ''), ''))

--
Terry Layne
Portland, OR

#10

Wow, tricky, didn't notice that! Eliminates controls as well.

Wonder if jbase has a switch to reverse that syntax to the uv form?

Chandru

"Terry Layne" <usenet (AT) laynesoftware (DOT) com> wrote

Quote:

jBASE uses that syntax. The inner CONVERT leaves you with bad chars and
the outer CONVERT eliminates them.

-Terry

On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 16:22:41 +0000, Chandru Murthi wrote:

Just curious: you have CONVERT(NAME, GOOD.CHARS, '') to convert all
good.chars to nulls. Which system has this syntax, because on UV its:
CONVERT(GOOD.CHARS, '',NAME)?

I won't ask why you're replace "good" characters with nulls to eliminate
them

Chandru
"Terry Layne" <usenet (AT) laynesoftware (DOT) com> wrote in message
news

an.2007.03.17.03.32.51.18599 (AT) laynesoftware (DOT) com...
On Tue, 27 Feb 2007 13:34:38 +0000, Allen Egerton wrote:

diets wrote:
Hi all

I need to remove funny characters from a string, and presently do it
as follows:
[snip]

* Initialization
GOOD.CHARS = 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'
GOOD.CHARS := 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
GOOD.CHARS := '0123456789'
GOOD.CHARS := " " ;* Space

* Get/define string to clean up.
NAME = 'THIS IS THE STRING WITH )(*&*& THE FUNNY && CHARACTERS @#IN
IT'

[snip]

After you get GOOD.CHARS you can do

NAME = TRIM(CONVERT(NAME, CONVERT(NAME, GOOD.CHARS, ''), ''))

--
Terry Layne
Portland, OR

--
Terry Layne
Portland, OR