Position command and comma??

[andrewbarbour]

I am trying to find the position of a substring in a string.

I am looking to find the position of the "close bracket comma space" i.e"), "

Let>strLine=blah blah blah), A. Fitzsimons (XX), C. Gannage (YYY)
Position>), ,strLine,X,dPos,FALSE

I get an "error in position command". It would seem like the comma is giving me greif.... any ideas??

thanks
Andrew

[Rain]

Try

Code: Select all

Let>strLine=blah blah blah), A. Fitzsimons (XX), C. Gannage (YYY)
Position>),%strLine%,1,dPos,FALSE
mdl>dPos

[andrewbarbour]

That works! Thanks

Try

Code: Select all

Let>strLine=blah blah blah), A. Fitzsimons (XX), C. Gannage (YYY)
Position>),%strLine%,1,dPos,FALSE
mdl>dPos

[jpuziano]

Hi andrewbarbour,

It seems to work because yes... the % chars around %strLine% mean that the comma ' chars within your string are no longer being confused as parameter separators in the Position> command... however you said...

I am looking to find the position of the "close bracket comma space" i.e."), "

...but that is not what is being found. You are only finding the position of the first ) char in your string. To prove that, run the code below:

Code: Select all

Let>strLine=b)lah blah blah), A. Fitzsimons (XX), C. Gannage (YYY)
Position>),%strLine%,1,dPos,FALSE
MDL>dPos

I added a ) char as the second char in your string and you will see the result is 2.

If you really want to find the position of the "close bracket comma space" i.e."), " then you need to use that as your search string however since the comma will be mistaken as a parameter separator, you have to use the same trick there too... run the following code and you will see that this will actually return the position value correctly:

Code: Select all

Let>strLine=b)lah blah blah), A. Fitzsimons (XX), C. Gannage (YYY)
Let>search_string=),%SPACE%
Position>search_string,%strLine%,1,dPos,FALSE
MDL>dPos

User Tip about any variable that ends in a space char:
Note the following line:

Let>search_string=),%SPACE%

Yes instead of %SPACE% I could have just typed an actual space char there however I prefer the above for two reasons:

1. It is easy to SEE verses a real space which is invisible unless you have the cursor blinking there are the actual very end of the line.
2. When you save your macro, Macro Scheduler "notices" all lines that end with a space and offers to clean them up for you by deleting the space. Normally you would say Yes and it would be fine however in this case, if it removed the space char, it would change the operation of your macro... so why take the risk?

i.e. take advantage of the %SPACE% system variable like I have above

Take care

[Phil Pendlebury]

Another invaluable tip there jpuziano Thank you.

[Runs to scripts to replace all spaces with %SPACE%]