tcl fragment

[Sarah Brennan Thies]

Friends,

I’m new . . . below is a tcl fragment on patient home phone number coming in hl7 and going out to a frl.  Sometimes the value out is blank . . . I understand the else portion of the code (building the phone number area code first) but need help understanding the first part of the code.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks, Sarah

set inp [lindex $xlateInVals 0]

if [cequal [string trimleft $inp 0] “”] {

   set xlateOutVals “”

} else {

   set one [csubstr $inp 1 3]

   set two [csubstr $inp 5 3]

   set three [csubstr $inp 9 4]

   set xlateOutVals “$one$two$three”

}

Topic

[James Cobane]

Sarah,

Here is a brief description of what the first part of the code is doing (denoted as comments #):

set inp [lindex $xlateInVals 0]

[Charlie Bursell]

Left out one thing Jim.  If one two or three happens to have spaces you will get undesired results.  Better to do:

set xlateOutVals

Also, if this is new code you are writing I would prefer you use the string command rather than cequal, csubstr, etc.  It is more ergonomic and more portable since string is a core command while the others are part of the TclX library.

If old code I would not go back and modify though

[James Cobane]

Good point, Charlie.  This isn’t code I provided (or wrote) but was merely giving an explanation of what was happening in her existing code.  I probably should have provided some recommendations as well; but, that is what we count on you for! 🙂

– Jim

[Sarah Brennan Thies]

Thanks!  This is very helpful 🙂 Sarah

[Author]

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