[AccessD] Use Regex - Create Camel Case

Michael,

The problem with doing this is that each object has to be examined character
by character, EVERY line.  In this specific case I could certainly do this
however I am under the impression that RegEx is optimized to do this kind of
thing.  Kind of the difference between a similar function to look at every
character and remove it if it matches something and using the replace to
remove a character. Replace is written in a highly optimized (perhaps even
in assembler) whereas the "loop and search" is not optimized at all.




John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com 
-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Michael Bahr
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 2:25 PM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [AccessD] Use Regex - Create Camel Case

Hi John, here is one way to do it (although there are many ways to get the
same end result).  Mind you this is air code but hopefully should be enough
to get you going.  You will need to create the main loop within your code.

Create a list of all delimiters that are used in your CSV files such as
delimiters = '%|*|$|@|!|#|&|^|_|-|,|.|;|:| '

then run through your CSV files line by line evaluating the line saving the
line into an array thisarray = Split(line, delimiters)

then run through the array performing a Ucase on the first letter of each
word newline = ""
For item=1 to ubound
  newline = newline & whatEverToCapFirstChar(item) Next item

where ubound is the array size


Now here are two scripts that do the same thing, one is Perl and the other
is TCL.  Both of these languages are open source and free and can be gotten
at http://www.activestate.com/Products/languages.plex

Perl:

my $delimiters = '/:| |\%|\*|\$|\@|\!|\#|\&|^|_|-|,|\./';
my @test = ("John colby",
            "%idiotic_Field*name",
            "hey#hey#Hey,hello_world",
            "this#is_a_test_of_the-emergency-broadcast-system");

foreach my $item (@test) {
   my $temp = "";
   my @list = split ($delimiters, $item);
   foreach my $thing (@list) {
      $temp .= ucfirst($thing);
   }
   print "$temp\n";

}

Result
d:\Perl>pascalcase.pl
JohnColby
IdioticFieldName
HeyHeyHeyHelloWorld
ThisIsATestOfTheEmergencyBroadcastSystem

TCL:

set delimiters {%|*|$|@|!|#|&|^|_|-|,|.|;|:|\ "} set test [list {John colby}
{%idiotic_Field*name} {hey#hey#Hey,hello_world}
{this#is_a_test_of_the-emergency-broadcast-system}]


foreach item $test {
   set str ""
   set mylist [split $item, $delimiters]
   foreach thing $mylist {
      set s [string totitle $thing]
      set str "$str$s"
   }
   puts $str

}

Results
D:\VisualTcl\Projects>tclsh pascalcase.tcl JohnColby IdioticFieldName
HeyHeyHeyHelloWorld ThisIsATestOfTheEmergencyBroadcastSystem


hth, Mike...


> Folks,
>
> I am looking for a regex expression (preferably with explanation) for 
> taking an expression and creating a camel case (or PascalCase) 
> expression.
>
> I get CSV files with headers in them.  All too often the eejits that 
> created the databases they came from used embedded spaces or other 
> special use characters (!@#$%^&* etc) in their field names.  I need to 
> strip these special characters out completely.  I also need to upper 
> case the valid alpha character that follows any of these special 
> characters.
>
> John colby becomes JohnColby
> %idiotic_Field*name becomes IdioticFieldName
>
> Etc.
>
> It appears that Regex is the key (I am doing this in VB.Net) but until 
> today I have never really tried to use RegEx and it ain't pretty!
>
> Any help in this would be much appreciated.
>
> John W. Colby
> Colby Consulting
> www.ColbyConsulting.com
>
> --
> AccessD mailing list
> AccessD at databaseadvisors.com
> http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd
> Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com
>


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