Formatting negative number

[Mike Campbell]

Here is an interesting one.

I have an incoming vrl file that has payment information.

Topic

[John Mercogliano]

Mike,

John Mercogliano
Semi Retired, contractor
Hampton Roads, VA

[Mike Campbell]

I did remove the dash from the subsub field.  

The actual payment data does have the parenthesis around the ‘negative’

amount.  I’m trying to structure a lsearch or lindex command to let me know

that the “(” exists but haven’t had any success with that.

[Jim Kosloskey]

Mike,

Once you have the value out if the xlateInVals list into a variable, you can do a number of things to determine if the parens exist.

one way is a regexp (I will let you ty that if you want).

another way is to simple use an if  with ‘string range’ to check the first character to see if it is “(” (the assumption here is that if the field begins with the left paren it probably ends with the right paren). If the assumption is more than what you want to make, then you can also check the last charactre for a right paren.

In any case, you will most likely also need to remove the parens – the ‘string map’ command can accomplish that for you – or you can use regsub.

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 30+ years Cloverleaf, 61 years IT – old fart.

[John Mercogliano]

In that case it sounds like they are sending negative amounts as (##.##) .  A simple string map could be the trick.  

Code:

lassign $xlateInVals payment
set payment [string trim [string map {( – ) {}} $payment]]
set in_length [clength $payment]
set xlateOutVals [list [format “%0$in_length.2f” $payment]]

John Mercogliano
Semi Retired, contractor
Hampton Roads, VA

[Jim Kosloskey]

That too  😮

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 30+ years Cloverleaf, 61 years IT – old fart.

[Mike Campbell]

Thanks to the good ideas, I’m much closer…

I am able to check for the existance of the ( and can do the

trim to format the output.

Now, just to add an explicit negative sign to the front of the amount.

So:

 incoming (76)

 otubound  -76.00

I’m thinking the concat command should work.

Gotta love vendors!

[Jim Kosloskey]

Mike,

Since this is a delimited file perhaps the source system has an option as to how to express negative numbers (many do) and could change their output to have a preceeding sign. Of course then you might have to deal with a leading +.

The use of parens to indicate a negative number is valid but not always useful.

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 30+ years Cloverleaf, 61 years IT – old fart.

[Mike Campbell]

Jim,

I agree 1000%.  However, this particular vendor really doesn’t play nice with others, and is always looking to add $$$ to their tab.  

I was able to get the output as desired thanks to the good ideas. The concat expression worked as designed!  

Thanks again Sir!

[Author]

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