A couple of ideas

[davkarw]

Hi there,

How about a function to count columns in a DB table, across multiple tables (I know you can connect to multiple tables with the scripting facility, but it would be REALLY nice to have it in the interface for at least this macro level stuff).

A common pattern for working with file names and paths.

Thanks for a great product.

[davkarw]

Also,

I would love to be able to search in reverse on a line of text, and or a filter to reverse an entire line of text so you can search at the end from the beginning of the line.

Also, is there a feature to find the last instance of an item in a line. I'm sure you can do all these things with scripting and/or regex, but something easy in the interface would help with lots of problems.

Thanks again.

[DataMystic Support]

Hi David,

There is a filter in the special menu to reverse each line - just make sure your replacement text is also reversed so when you reverse the line back to its original form the text is correct!

You can also anchor a regex to the line end
a([^a]*)$
"Find a, followed by zero or more not a's, followed by the end of line"

What sorts of filename/path processing do you need to do? We can certainly provide more examples - and these can be added to the user-customizable pattern menu.

Having specific database functions really goes beyond the core feature set of TP. Why do you need to do this?

[davkarw]

Simon,

Thanks! I found the reverse the line filter. That said, I still imagine that a built in function to search from the end of a line will be much faster than reversing the line first, unless it's semantics from the apps persepctive. Still, it's one less filter for the user to put in place. I'm sure it's a non-trivial task to code in a new function like that.

Another feature that would be nice is to have a way to do a search and replace on a specific occurrence of an item in the specific text/line/whatever. In other words, change the first instance, last instance, or third instance of something. Would be really neat if in a simple format to use for us non-regex folk.

As to the filepaths, I work with NY City and we are dealing with some (as you can imagine) massive sets of files. One of the things we'd like to do is write a directory list to a table in a database where you would have size, date, time, path, filename (with extension), extension type, and other bits like rights attributes, etc. In the case of textpipe, it would be great to be able to change the path info to reflect those fields. I sent you a .fil with how I got to doing the transforms, but a common filter to identify a full path would be great as I'm not yet good enough at it to deal with multiple directory levels and files without extensions while still catching the pattern.

Again, your tool is amazing and I really appreciate your help.
David

[DataMystic Support]

Thanks David,

As you say, this is definitely non-trivial to code, especially since TextPipe doesn't really use the concept of 'lines' when it processes data.

Changing a specific occurrence can actually be done via VBScript with a subfilter. We'll post an example in the next newsletter.

We'll checkout the filepaths and see if we can help!

[Guest]

Hi,

I've been trawling the web trying to figure out how to do this -

Another feature that would be nice is to have a way to do a search and replace on a specific occurrence of an item in the specific text/line/whatever. In other words, change the first instance, last instance, or third instance of something. Would be really neat if in a simple format to use for us non-regex folk.

I'm currently trying to figure out how to do this after downloading your trial. This is the closest I've come to getting an answer to this problem.

Changing a specific occurrence can actually be done via VBScript with a subfilter. We'll post an example in the next newsletter.

Is this newsletter available online?

regards,

Darren Yates

[DataMystic Support]

Yes - please see:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/datamystic/message/74

For the newsletter archive, see:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/datamystic/