Text search and replace in column delimitated text files.

[Ian Skinner-3]

I have text files that contain a several hundred to thousands of column
delimitated records.  I need to replace a two digit year value from 08
to 42 in four places in each record at characters 4 and 5; 29 and 30; 60
and 61; as well as 153 and 154.  Anybody have a quick how-to to
accomplish this?  I have never done this type of large search and
replace where the only unique identifier of the data is it's position in
the string.

Any creative ideas on a way to do this without writing a large string
processor to loop over all the records doing several string chopping and
concactination operations?  I have available to me the default Windows
XP Professional and Windows Office 2000 programs, Dreamweaver and
Crimson Editor as well as Java, Perl and ColdFusion programming
languages for text manipulation.






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[Maureen-2]

Do you mean comma delimited records?

Try this:
(syntax not exact - but you get the idea)

Import the records into a table mytable
<cfquery name="FixRecords>
, select fieldtochange from mytable
</cfquery>

<cfoutput query="FixRecords>
<cfif mid(FixRecords.fieldtochange,4,2) eq "08">
  <cfset newstring = left(string, 3) & "42" & right(string, 6, (len(string)-5)>
</cfif>
<cfif mid(newstring,29,2) eq "08">
  <cfset newstring = left(newstring, 28) & "42" & right(newstring, 31,
(len(string)-30))>
</cfif>
 <cfif mid(newstring,60,2) eq "08">
  <cfset newstring = left(newstring, 59) & "42" & right(newstring, 62,
(len(string)-61))>
</cfif>
 <cfif mid(newstring,153,2) eq "08">
  <cfset newstring = left(newstring, 152) & "42" & right(newstring,
155, (len(string-154))>
</cfif>

<cfquery name="updateRecord">
update Mytable
set Fixedrecord = #newString#>
</cfquery>
</cfoutput>

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 10:21 AM, Ian Skinner <HOF@...> wrote:

> I have text files that contain a several hundred to thousands of column
>  delimitated records.  I need to replace a two digit year value from 08
>  to 42 in four places in each record at characters 4 and 5; 29 and 30; 60
>  and 61; as well as 153 and 154.  Anybody have a quick how-to to
>  accomplish this?  I have never done this type of large search and
>  replace where the only unique identifier of the data is it's position in
>  the string.
>
>  Any creative ideas on a way to do this without writing a large string
>  processor to loop over all the records doing several string chopping and
>  concactination operations?  I have available to me the default Windows
>  XP Professional and Windows Office 2000 programs, Dreamweaver and
>  Crimson Editor as well as Java, Perl and ColdFusion programming
>  languages for text manipulation.

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