"String/Text value modification"

jaakko1

Hi everyone,

I'm struggling to find a solution to this simple task. My data consists of columns with text in them, eg.
col1
example text
another - example
third, example

Question is, how can I get rid of the spaces, hyphens, commas, etc, so the data would look something like this:
col1
example_text
another_example
third_example.

Any help would be much appreciated!

-J

Marco_Boeck

Hi,

you can try the following process:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<process version="6.0.006">
  <context>
    <input/>
    <output/>
    <macros/>
  </context>
  <operator activated="true" class="process" compatibility="6.0.007-SNAPSHOT" expanded="true" name="Process">
    <process expanded="true">
      <operator activated="true" class="retrieve" compatibility="6.0.007-SNAPSHOT" expanded="true" height="60" name="Retrieve toDo" width="90" x="45" y="30">
        <parameter key="repository_entry" value="originalData"/>
      </operator>
      <operator activated="true" class="trim" compatibility="6.0.007-SNAPSHOT" expanded="true" height="76" name="Trim" width="90" x="178" y="30"/>
      <operator activated="true" class="replace" compatibility="6.0.007-SNAPSHOT" expanded="true" height="76" name="Replace comma" width="90" x="313" y="30">
        <parameter key="attribute" value="nom"/>
        <parameter key="replace_what" value=","/>
        <parameter key="replace_by" value=" "/>
      </operator>
      <operator activated="true" class="replace" compatibility="6.0.007-SNAPSHOT" expanded="true" height="76" name="Replace hyphen" width="90" x="447" y="30">
        <parameter key="replace_what" value="-"/>
        <parameter key="replace_by" value=" "/>
      </operator>
      <operator activated="true" class="replace" compatibility="6.0.007-SNAPSHOT" expanded="true" height="76" name="Replace whitespace" width="90" x="580" y="30">
        <parameter key="attribute" value="nom"/>
        <parameter key="replace_what" value=" +"/>
        <parameter key="replace_by" value="_"/>
      </operator>
      <connect from_op="Retrieve toDo" from_port="output" to_op="Trim" to_port="example set input"/>
      <connect from_op="Trim" from_port="example set output" to_op="Replace comma" to_port="example set input"/>
      <connect from_op="Replace comma" from_port="example set output" to_op="Replace hyphen" to_port="example set input"/>
      <connect from_op="Replace hyphen" from_port="example set output" to_op="Replace whitespace" to_port="example set input"/>
      <connect from_op="Replace whitespace" from_port="example set output" to_port="result 1"/>
      <portSpacing port="source_input 1" spacing="0"/>
      <portSpacing port="sink_result 1" spacing="0"/>
      <portSpacing port="sink_result 2" spacing="0"/>
    </process>
  </operator>
</process>

Basically the idea is to first trim (i.e. remove leading and trailing whitespaces), then replace everything that is undesired and not a whitespace with a whitespace. As the last step, we replace all remaining whitespaces of length >= 1 with an underscore.

Regards,
Marco

jaakko1

Marco,

thank you so much! This solved the problem.

-J