Substring with Xlate

[Rich]

This is an awesome forum with very responsive folks, and I truly appreciate you all!!!

I need to strip the last three characters off of an accession number.  10501496SMR  The SMR needs to be removed from the field.  Is there a way to do a substring replace with an xlate?

Thanks,

Rich

Topic

[Paul Bishop]

Yes, but the way you do it can depend on how the data will be.  Will it always be the same length?  Will the characters always be “SMR”?  Will the characters you want to remove always be three characters?

If it is always three characters from the end you want to remove, the quick way is to use the string range command.  In the pre-proc portion of the xlate copy:

lassign $xlateInVals in_data

set out_data [string range $in_data 0 end-3]

set xlateOutVals

 

If it isn’t always three characters, it gets a little more tricky.

 

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by Paul Bishop.

Paul Bishop
Carle Foundation Hospital
Urbana, IL

[Rich]

Thank you for the great response!  With the pre-proc, how do I get the OBR.18 value in, and then replace it back in OBR.18 after it is processed?

[Jim Kosloskey]

Set the Source in the Xlate to point to the IB OBR-18 and the Destination to point to the OB OBR-18. Use a COPY Action. XlateOutVals is a list of the specified Destination address(es).

Seriously though if you have the STRING Action – use it.

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[James Nelson]

You could use a TCL fragment.
<pre>set xlateOutVals [string range [lindex $xlateInVals 0] 0 end-3]

</pre>

[James Cobane]

<pre>One thing to keep in mind is to always treat xlateInVals and xlateOutVals as ‘lists’.  So, when setting xlateOutVals, treat it as a list:

set xlateOutVals [ list $out_data ]

or

set xlateOutVals [ list [string range [lindex $xlateInVals 0] 0 end-3] ]

using the above examples.

Jim Cobane
Henry Ford Health System</pre>

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by James Cobane.

[Anonymous]

One way of many:

[ string range {10501496SMR} 0 [ expr [ string length {10501496SMR} ] – 4 ] ]

[Keith McLeod]

Or the latest favorite, and yes it depends on what you are trying to accomplish, use the string command with the following function:

xlateStrSubstring 0 end-3

[Jim Kosloskey]

This is what I recommend if your release of CL has the STRING Action.

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[Author]

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