STRING EXPAND WHITESPACE

STRING EXPAND WHITESPACE

Let Subcommand

Replace non-printing characters in a string with a single space character.

When extracting strings from external sources, you may encounter non-printing characters. The STRING REMOVE WHITESPACE can be used to simply remove these characters from the string. Alternatively, the STRING EXPAND WHITESPACE can be used to convert non-printing characters to a single space character.

The tab character is treated somewhat differently. Specifically, you can use the command

SET TAB EXPAND <value>

to specify how tab characters are handled. Specifically, if <value> is 0, then the tab character is retained in the string (no space is added). If <value> is a positive integer, the tab character will be replaced with <value> spaces.

The non-printing characters are the ones with codes 0 to 31 and 127 in the ASCII collating sequence. Currently, Dataplot only checks for characters in the 0 - 127 range of the ASCII collating sequence.

LET <sout> = STRING EXPAND WHITESPACE <sorg>
where <sout> is the name of the resulting string;
and      <sorg> is the name of the original string.

LET SOUT = STRING EXPAND WHITESPACE STIN

The name of the new string can be the same as the original string. For example,
LET STR = STRING EXPAND WHITESPACE STR

In this case, STR will now contain the the string with all white space characters removed rather than the original string.

The string on the right hand side of the equal sign must be a previously existing string. That is, expressions are not allowed. For example, the following will result in an error message
LET STOUT = STRING EXPAND WHITESPACE "a b c d"

you need to do

LET STRING SORG = a b c d
LET SOUT = STRING EXPAND WHITESPACE SORG


The name on the left hand side of the equal sign may be a previously existing string. However, if it is a previously existing parameter, variable, or matrix name, an error will be reported and the requested string will not be created.

The total number of characters that DATAPLOT can use for storing functions and strings is set when DATAPLOT is built. The current default (11/2008) is 50,000 characters. Previous versions may set this limit at 1,000 or 10,000 characters. This limit applies to the combined number of characters for all functions and strings.

None

None

STRING REMOVE WHITE SPACE	=	Remove white space and non-printing characters from a string.
STRING REMOVE SPACE	=	Remove spaces from a string.
STRING REMOVE PUNCTUATION	=	Remove punctuation from a string.
STRING DELETE	=	Remove user specifed characters from a string.
NUMBER OF WORDS	=	Return the number of words in a string.
UPPER CASE	=	Convert a string to upper case.
LOWER CASE	=	Convert a string to lower case.
LET FUNCTION	=	Defines a function.
LET STRING	=	Defines a string.
READ STRING	=	Reads a string from a file.
SUBSTITUTE CHARACTER (^)	=	Substitute the value of a string or parameter.
CONCATENATE CHARACTER (&)	=	Concatenate two strings.
SUBTRING	=	Extract a substring from an existing string.
BLANK STRING	=	Create a blank string.
STRING INDEX	=	Extract the start/stop positions of a substring within a string.
STRING CONCATENATE	=	Concatenate one or more previously defined strings.
STRING EDIT	=	Edit a string.
STRING MERGE	=	Insert a string into another string without overwrite.
STRING LENGTH	=	Return the length of a string.
CHARACTER	=	Convert numeric values to strings based on the ASCII collating sequence.
ICHAR	=	Convert a string to numeric values based on the ASCII collating sequence.
GROUP LABEL	=	Define the text for group labels.

Data Management

2019/02

 
set tab expand 3
read string tab.dat t
let tout = string expand whitespace t
print t tout
    

The following output is generated

 FUNCTIONS--

     T       --Text with	several	tab	characters
     TOUT    --Text with   several   tab   characters