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Posted March 12th, 2008 by sheridany

I wanted to test drive the text parser for ascii data and I get an error message saying I don't have access to "this page". Not sure why that happens.

A couple of technical questions I have are:
Can the parsing tool remove cr and lf from text data within a ascii or csv file that is pipe delimited?
Can it remove parts of the line that contains garbage and only parse the remainder of the line into a new field?
Can I use it to search for certain patterns and replace with an equivalent?

Thanks,

Sheridan Young

‹ Data Source not find Data Parser for Btrieve ›

RE: Download Trial

On March 12th, 2008 jterrell said:

Hi sheridany,

Thank you for letting us know about the page error. The problem has been fixed, so please let us know if you still cannot download the Trial Data Parser for Fixed Text.

Here are answers to your technical questions:

Can the parsing tool remove CR (carriage returns) and LF (line feeds) from text data within a ASCII or CSV file that is pipe delimited?
My first answer to this question makes the assumption that the CR-LFs are record separators. So, yes, when you export the data to your target CSV file, you can choose from a variety of target Properties options, including the ability to select a different record separator or no record separator. Look on the Properties tab when the Export dialog box opens.
If the CR-LFs are "embedded" within the data fields (rather than at the end of each record), the answer is NO. However, the Data Extractor for Unstructured Text may be able to handle your source data file better than the Data Parser.
Can it remove parts of the line that contains garbage and only parse the remainder of the line into a new field?
If the garbage (or any other data you do not want in your target file) resides in the same byte positions of every record in your source file, you can define that "section" of the source records as a data field. But because the Data Parsers do not include some of the advanced mapping features that are available in the Data UpLoaders and Data DownLoaders you would need to do the data parsing as "step 1", and then use one of the Data UpLoaders as "step 2" to clean your data before it is written to the target file. In the Data Loader, you would simply not map the unwanted data fields to your target.
Again, the Data Extractor may be able to handle the unwanted data better than the Data Parser.
Can I use it to search for certain patterns and replace with an equivalent?
The Data Parsers do not include the ability to clean/transform data on-the-fly like the Data UpLoaders and Data DownLoaders, because the Data Parsers do not include the Map Fields tab or the RIFL Expression Builder. This issue can also be solved by using a 2-step process. The RIFL Expression Builder includes several built-in functions designed for on-the-fly "search and replace" capabilities.

- Jo