string cleanup question, RegEx/Find

[bdog2020]

Hi there,
I've got some data that's coming in from another system and ends up being in one field looking a bit like this:
;tweed;cotton;;

I'm just needing to trim the list so there's not a leading or trailing semicolon, so I end up like this:
tweed;cotton

But, having a hard time with the right combo of RegExpression or find operations to do that.

thanks,
MB

 

[cfSearching]

1. How are you actually using the value
2. What about extra ";" in between elements, like "tweed;;cotton;"?

I ask because CF list functions ignore empty elements. So if you wanted to ignore all empty elements, you could just use list functions.

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http://cfsearching.blogspot.com/

 

[bdog2020]

thanks cfSearching.

Yeah, I just want to display it, minus the ;'s at the beginning and end (but you bring up a good point about the ones possibly in the middle). It is one field but comes in from another data source with 4 fields, that are all dumped into my 1 field. I can't change how it's coming in for the moment, and it's just separating with a semicolon. So, it could be a variety of things, depending on blank values in particular positions of the 4 fields.

I was just trying to split it using ArrayToList, that seemed possibly promising.

 

[cfSearching]

Hmm. Well if you need to do any matching with the external system you may want to preserve the extra ";"'s. Though you could easily use list functions for display purposes.

But why store it in 1 field? If you anticipate doing any queries at all on the information, you might want to rethink that. Delimited fields can be an absolute nightmare to query.

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http://cfsearching.blogspot.com/

 

[bdog2020]

you're right on all counts. We're currently just using it to display, I might see if I can have the import approach changed.

I got what I need just by doing some of this stuff:

<cfoutput>
<cfset txt=';;;plaid;;;tweed;;cotton;;;'>

<cfset MB=ListToArray(txt,";") />

<cfdump var="#MB#">

<cfloop from=1 to="#arraylen(MB)#" index="i">
<cfif i EQ arraylen(MB)>
#MB#
<cfelse>
#MB#;
</cfif>
</cfloop>

</cfoutput>