Extracting alpha from messy data

[wlynch]

Is there a way to extract (eliminate) all the alpha data from a string that looks like this? they want the numbers, not the letters. Thanks.

63(J)
64(J)
67(J)
35(J)
97(R)
xx63(J)
xx96(J)
805(K)
T32(J)
T6(J)
44(J)
xx702(J)
45(J)
xx11(J)
xx54(J)
x3455(P)

 

[JRB-Bldr]

MikeLewis wrote a nice approach in his reply to another posting a while ago: thread184-1581528

You could modify it to meet your needs pretty easily.

Good Luck,
JRB-Bldr

 

[wlynch]

Thanks. I'll look and see if I can figure something out.

WL

 

[Olaf Doschke]

jrbbldr,

I assume you thought about this portion of Mikes posts in that thread:

lcNum = <the input number>
lcX = CHRTRAN(lcNum, "0123456789", "") 
lcY = CHRTRAN(lcNum, lcX, "")   && remove unwanted chars

applied to with lcNum = "63(J)" for example this ressults as "63" in lcY.

That answer didn't get a star, so it's not that obvious to wlynch you meant this. That's why I copied this out from there.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[wlynch]

I think that is what I am after Olaf. I'll have to play around with it this morning. The entire file has lots of different letters in it and this looks like a winner. Thanks.

Will

 

[SnyAc]

Olaf... I'll give you a star for that suggestion. Nice little bit of logic there....

Andy Snyder
SnyAc Software Services

http://www.snysoft.com

Hyperware Inc. a division of AmTech Software

http://www.hyperwareinc.com

 

[JRB-Bldr]

Olaf - you are correct in which part of Mike's response I was referring to.

wlynch - I hope that Mike's code which Olaf copied here will work for you. It should.

* --- Mike Lewis's Code ---
lcnum = "63(J)"
lcX = CHRTRAN(lcNum, "0123456789", "")
* --- At this point lcX = "(J)"
lcY = CHRTRAN(lcNum, lcX, "")
* --- Here lcY = "63" ---

As I said before you can probably get what you need by either just using part of the code or modifying it as needed.

Good Luck,
JRB-Bldr

 

[wlynch]

What would be good is if the client did'nt insist on using such crazy data in the first place. Thanks to you all. The code does help.