Re: Exploding column-data question

CAVILA@zycon.com writes: >Hello, > I have a varchar column with data that looks like this example: > my_list A/BC/D/EFG/H/ > The "/" character can be replaced by any printable character, it is only > there to serve as a delimiter. > I'd like to assign this to a record variable and then use a display array > to have my form end up looking like this: > [ A] > [ BC] > [ D] > [EFG] > [ H] > My question is: can this be done easily using Informix 4GL? Can someone > please post a way to parse through the list and address each of the data > elements? Also, would there be a way to address one specific piece of > data, without having to look at each character? (ie: my_list(3) = "D") Refer to a single character via subscript (ie: my_list[3] = "D"), you got it right except that you need to use brackets. You can refer also to a subscripted range (my_list[2,4] = "YES"; characters in positions 2 through 4 inclusive). So, here's the array loading routine: FUNCTION load_array(string) DEFINE string CHAR(###) DEFINE la_array ARRAY[##] OF RECORD val CHAR(3) END RECORD DEFINE l,x,y,arr SMALLINT LET l = LENGTH(string) IF l > 0 THEN LET arr = 0 LET x = 1 FOR y = 1 TO l IF string[y] = "/" THEN # delimiter. Fill in the array and increment LET arr = arr + 1 IF arr > ## THEN ERROR "More than ", ##, " array rows required" EXIT FOR END IF IF y = 1 OR x = y THEN # the first character in the string was a delimiter, # or we has two delimiters in a row, set to NULL LET la_array[arr].val = NULL ELSE # set the value to the x through y-1 charactes IF y - x > 3 THEN # more than 3 characters between delimiters ERROR "WARNING! array value ", arr USING "<<<&", " was truncated." LET la_array[arr].val = string[x,y-1] END IF # increment the next starting point LET x = y + 1 CONTINUE FOR END IF END FOR IF string[l] != "/" AND arr < ## THEN # get the last one LET arr = arr + 1 # set the value to the x through l characters LET la_array[arr].val = string[x,l] END IF END IF CALL set_count(arr) DISPLAY ARRAY ... ============================================================ Dennis J. Pimple Informix Software Inc Senior Consultant Denver Colorado USA dennisp@informix.com Voice:303-850-0210 Fax:303-779-4025