I'm writing a VBA macro to update ONLY SEQ fields in Word 2013 documents. I designed it to use GoTo to visit each SEQ field one at a time from start to end of the document (NOT Update All) to ensure that I skip other field types. I'm struggling to make it loop for each SEQ field until the end of the document is reached. I want it to work in any document, regardless of bookmarks or other end markers.
Here's the code I have so far (With comments):
ActiveWindow.View.FieldShading = wdFieldShadingAlways
'go to top of document
Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
'Go To the first SEQ field
Selection.GoTo What:=wdGoToField, Which:=wdGoToNext, Count:=1, Name:="SEQ"
' Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
'as long as there are more field codes, update this one and go to the next one
Do While Selection.GoToNext.wdGoToField = True
Selection.Fields.Update
Loop
It's a bit late, but your question came up when I was looking for the same answer. :-)
For flexibility, the actual work is done as a function, where the field code is received as a string. That way I can call the function with any desired field code, not necessarily a specific SEQ or any field code at all.
Function UpdateSpecificFields(MyFieldCode As String)
Dim MyField As Field
For Each MyField In ActiveDocument.Fields
' Debug.Print """" & MyField.Code & """" & MyField.Result
If InStr(1, MyField.Code, MyFieldCode) <> 0 Then
MyField.Update
End If
Next MyField
End Function
We're looping through all the fields within the active document. You could include a test of whether MyField.Type = wdFieldSequence to reduce the unnecessary work.
The InStr is there in case of odd spacing; sometimes the field creator might include an extra space before or after the code itself, so I didn't want to be too literal. (I suppose there should have been a trim() to get rid of said spaces but I was getting a little lazy.)
Usage: Call the function from a sub.
Sub UpdateSEQQs()
UpdateSpecificFields ("SEQ Qs")
End Sub
I have a SEQ called Qs, so you can see how it was called above. Hope this helps someone!
Related
I've got a file with syntactically correct Lua 5.1 source code.
I've got a position (line and character offset) inside that file.
I need to get an offset in bytes to the closing parenthesis of the innermost function() body that contains that position (or figure out that the position belongs to the main chunk of the file).
I.e.:
local function foo()
^ result
print("bar")
^ input
end
local foo = function()
^ result
print("bar")
^ input
end
local foo = function()
return function()
^ result
print("bar")
^ input
end
end
...And so on.
How do I do that robustly?
EDIT: My original answer did not take into account the "innermost" requirement. I've since taken that into account
To make things "robust," there are a few considerations.
First of all, it's important that you skip over string and comment contents, to avoid incorrect output in situations like:
foo = function()
print(" function() ")
-- function()
print("bar")
^ input
end
This can be somewhat difficult, considering Lua's nested string and comment syntax. Consider, for example, a situation where the input begins in a nested string or comment:
foo = function()
print([[
bar = function()
print("baz")
^ input
end
]])
end
Consequently, if you want a completely robust system, it is not acceptable to only parse backwards until you hit the end of a function parameter list, because you may not have parsed backwards far enough to reach a [[ which would invalidate your match. It is therefore necessary to parse the entire file up to your position (unless you're okay with incorrect matches in these weird situations. If this is an editor plugin, these "incorrect" results may actually be desirable, because they would allow you to edit lua code which is stored in string literal form inside other lua code using the same plugin).
Because the particular syntax that you're trying to match doesn't have any kind of "nesting", a full-blown parser isn't needed. You will need to maintain a stack, however, to keep track of scope. With that in mind, all you need to do is step through the source file character-by-character from the beginning, applying the following logic:
Every time a " or ' is encountered, ignore the characters up to the closing " or '. Be careful to handle escapes like \" and \\
Every time a -- is encountered, ignore the characters up to the closing newline for the comment. Be careful to only do this if the comment is not a multiline comment.
Every time a multiline string opening symbol is encountered (such as [[, [=[, etc), or a multiline comment symbol is encountered (such as --[[ or --[=[, etc) ignore the characters up until the closing square brackets with the proper number of matching equals signs between them.
When a word boundary is encountered check to see if the characters after it could begin a block which ends with an end (for example, if, while, for, function, etc. DO NOT include repeat). If so, push the position on the scope stack. A "word boundary" in this case is any character which could not be used a lua identifier (this is to prevent matches in cases like abcfunction()). The beginning of the file is also considered a word boundary.
If a word boundary is encountered and it is followed by end, pop the top element of the stack. If the stack has no elements, complain about a syntax error.
When you finally step forward and reach your "input" position, pop elements from the stack until you find a function scope. Step forward from that position to the next ), ignoring )'s in comments (which could theoretically be found in an argument list if it spans multiple lines or contains inline --[[ ]] comments). That position is your result.
This should handle every case, including situations where the function syntactic sugar is used, like
function foo()
print("bar")
end
which you did not include in your example but which I imagine you still want to match.
I am using LUA to create a table within a table, and am running into an issue. I need to also populate the NIL values that appear, but can not seem to get it right.
String being manipulated:
PatID = '07-26-27~L73F11341687Per^^^SCI^SP~N7N558300000Acc^'
for word in PatID:gmatch("[^\~w]+") do table.insert(PatIDTable,word) end
local _, PatIDCount = string.gsub(PatID,"~","")
PatIDTableB = {}
for i=1, PatIDCount+1 do
PatIDTableB[i] = {}
end
for j=1, #PatIDTable do
for word in PatIDTable[j]:gmatch("[^\^]+") do
table.insert(PatIDTableB[j], word)
end
end
This currently produces this output:
table
[1]=table
[1]='07-26-27'
[2]=table
[1]='L73F11341687Per'
[2]='SCI'
[3]='SP'
[3]=table
[1]='N7N558300000Acc'
But I need it to produce:
table
[1]=table
[1]='07-26-27'
[2]=table
[1]='L73F11341687Per'
[2]=''
[3]=''
[4]='SCI'
[5]='SP'
[3]=table
[1]='N7N558300000Acc'
[2]=''
EDIT:
I think I may have done a bad job explaining what it is I am looking for. It is not necessarily that I want the karats to be considered "NIL" or "empty", but rather, that they signify that a new string is to be started.
They are, I guess for lack of a better explanation, position identifiers.
So, for example:
L73F11341687Per^^^SCI^SP
actually translates to:
1. L73F11341687Per
2.
3.
4. SCI
5. SP
If I were to have
L73F11341687Per^12ABC^^SCI^SP
Then the positions are:
1. L73F11341687Per
2. 12ABC
3.
4. SCI
5. SP
And in turn, the table would be:
table
[1]=table
[1]='07-26-27'
[2]=table
[1]='L73F11341687Per'
[2]='12ABC'
[3]=''
[4]='SCI'
[5]='SP'
[3]=table
[1]='N7N558300000Acc'
[2]=''
Hopefully this sheds a little more light on what I'm trying to do.
Now that we've cleared up what the question is about, here's the issue.
Your gmatch pattern will return all of the matching substrings in the given string. However, your gmatch pattern uses "+". That means "one or more", which therefore cannot match an empty string. If it encounters a ^ character, it just skips it.
But, if you just tried :gmatch("[^\^]*"), which allows empty matches, the problem is that it would effectively turn every ^ character into an empty match. Which is not what you want.
What you want is to eat the ^ at the end of a substring. But, if you try :gmatch("([^\^])\^"), you'll find that it won't return the last string. That's because the last string doesn't end with ^, so it isn't a valid match.
The closest you can get with gmatch is this pattern: "([^\^]*)\^?". This has the downside of putting an empty string at the end. However, you can just remove that easily enough, since one will always be placed there.
local s0 = '07-26-27~L73F11341687Per^^^SCI^SP~N7N558300000Acc^'
local tt = {}
for s1 in (s0..'~'):gmatch'(.-)~' do
local t = {}
for s2 in (s1..'^'):gmatch'(.-)^' do
table.insert(t, s2)
end
table.insert(tt, t)
end
How can I replace the empty widestring characters from a string?
e.g:
'H e l l o' convert to 'Hello'
I read an text blob field from a DB, and want to store it in another table. When I read it, I get the extra spaces, when I store it the extra spaces remains, and cannot be read correctly at the next query.
DXE, Firebird 2.5
UPDATE:
I use the IBQuery -> DataSetProvider -> ClientDataSet without desin-time created fields.
It seams, that the IBQuery retrieves the data in that wrong format.
Current Write Code:
blobStream := TStringStream.Create;
...
blobStream.WriteString(blobText); //blobText = 'H e l l o';
ibsql.ParamByName('ABLOBCOL').LoadFromStream(blobStream);
...
ibsql.ExecQuery;
...
In the FB database is 'H e l l o' stored, but it must be 'Hello'. Since it seems to be a bug in IBQuery, I need a way to convert that string.
First of all, I'm not going to attempt to describe how to remove every other character from a string. Whilst that might appear to solve your problem it merely papers thinly over the gaping cracks. What you have here is a classic text encoding mismatch. The real solution to your problem will involve fixing the mismatch.
I suspect the problem arises in code that you have not shown. As I understand your question now, you have a string variable blobText that contains incorrectly encoded text. But the code in the question takes blobText as input, and so the damage has already been done by the time we reach the code in the question. The key to solving this is the code that puts duff data into blobText.
You need to find the code which assigns to blobText and sort out the encoding problem there. It looks like you have taken UTF-16 encoded text and interpreted it as if it had an 8 bit encoding. I could speculate as to how that would happen, but it would be better for you to look at the actual code, the code that assigns to blobText. If you cannot work it out, please do post an update to the question.
I'm pretty confident that there are no bugs in the database libraries and that this is just an encoding mismatch.
The max number of characters you can use in string in a vba function is 255.
I am trying to run this function
Var1= 1
Var2= 2
.
.
.
Var256 =256
RunMacros= "'Tims_pet_Robot """ & Var1 & """ , """ & Var2 & """ , """ ... """ & Var256 """ '"
Runat=TimeValue("15:00:00")
Application.OnTime EarliestTime:=Runat, Procedure:=RunMacros & RunMacros2 ', schedule:=True
It runs a procedure at a certain time and passes a bunch of variables to it. but the string is too long.
Update:
Regrettably I am sure it is not the watch window.
Also, it isn't really the max size of a string that I'm dealing with. It's the max size of
a string in a vba function.
For example this function works.
Sub test()
Dim RunAt As Date
Dim RunWhat As String
RunAt = Now + 0.00001
RunWhat = "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" & _
"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" & _
"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" 'that makes 254 'a''s
Application.OnTime EarliestTime:=RunAt, Procedure:="'" & RunWhat & " 12'"
End Sub
Sub aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa(m As Integer)
MsgBox ("it works!" & m)
End Sub
But if you change the 12 to 123 it breaks
Example
Sub test2()
Dim RunAt As Date
Dim RunWhat As String
RunAt = Now + 0.00001
RunWhat = "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" & _
"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" & _
"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" 'that makes 254 'a''s
Application.OnTime EarliestTime:=RunAt, Procedure:="'" & RunWhat & " 123'"
End Sub
Sub aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa(m As Integer)
MsgBox ("it works!" & m)
End Sub
This code does not work, I'm pretty sure it's because a vba function cannot handle a string with more than 255 chars.
Even if you're in Excel and call a function and give it a string longer that 255 chars it doesn't work.
Try in cell A1 =vlookup("really long string", A1:Z10, 1) and then put the really long string somewhere in that range. The vlookup will fail (not fail to find it, but you won't actually be able to do it)
Also I am aware that there is a max length to a sub name, I'm just under it. Sorry that it look so ugly.
Update 2: so I just ended up printing the variable to a sheet and getting the function called by ontime to read them off the sheet. :(
I may have missed something here, but why can't you just declare your string with the desired size? For example, in my VBA code I often use something like:
Dim AString As String * 1024
which provides for a 1k string. Obviously, you can use whatever declaration you like within the larger limits of Excel and available memory etc.
This may be a little inefficient in some cases, and you will probably wish to use Trim(AString) like constructs to obviate any superfluous trailing blanks. Still, it easily exceeds 256 chars.
This works and shows more than 255 characters in the message box.
Sub TestStrLength()
Dim s As String
Dim i As Integer
s = ""
For i = 1 To 500
s = s & "1234567890"
Next i
MsgBox s
End Sub
The message box truncates the string to 1023 characters, but the string itself can be very large.
I would also recommend that instead of using fixed variables names with numbers (e.g. Var1, Var2, Var3, ... Var255) that you use an array. This is much shorter declaration and easier to use - loops.
Here's an example:
Sub StrArray()
Dim var(256) As Integer
Dim i As Integer
Dim s As String
For i = 1 To 256
var(i) = i
Next i
s = "Tims_pet_Robot"
For i = 1 To 256
s = s & " """ & var(i) & """"
Next i
SecondSub (s)
End Sub
Sub SecondSub(s As String)
MsgBox "String length = " & Len(s)
End Sub
Updated this to show that a string can be longer than 255 characters and used in a subroutine/function as a parameter that way. This shows that the string length is 1443 characters. The actual limit in VBA is 2GB per string.
Perhaps there is instead a problem with the API that you are using and that has a limit to the string (such as a fixed length string). The issue is not with VBA itself.
Ok, I see the problem is specifically with the Application.OnTime method itself. It is behaving like Excel functions in that they only accept strings that are up to 255 characters in length. VBA procedures and functions though do not have this limit as I have shown. Perhaps then this limit is imposed for any built-in Excel object method.
Update:
changed ...longer than 256 characters... to ...longer than 255 characters...
Are you sure? This forum thread suggests it might be your watch window. Try outputting the string to a MsgBox, which can display a maximum of 1024 characters:
MsgBox RunMacros
This test shows that the string in VBA can be at least 10^8 characters long. But if you change it to 10^9 you will fail.
Sub TestForStringLengthVBA()
Dim text As String
text = Space(10 ^ 8) & "Hello world"
Debug.Print Len(text)
text = Right(text, 5)
Debug.Print text
End Sub
So do not be mislead by Intermediate window editor or MsgBox output.
Couldn't you just have another sub that acts as a caller using module level variable(s) for the arguments you want to pass. For example...
Option Explicit
Public strMsg As String
Sub Scheduler()
strMsg = "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"
Application.OnTime Now + TimeValue("00:00:01"), "'Caller'"
End Sub
Sub Caller()
Call aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa("It Works! " & strMsg)
End Sub
Sub aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa(strMessage As String)
MsgBox strMessage
End Sub
Excel only shows 255 characters but in fact if more than 255 characters are saved, to see the complete string, consult it in the immediate window
Press Crl + G and type ?RunWhat in the immediate window and press Enter
One of the main causes of this problem that I’ve run into is the fact that the entire procedure-plus-arguments string is limited to 255 characters, including the procedure's containing Excel file specification (automatically added by Excel), which is aggravated by Excel’s brain-dead default specification of the file's full-path\name. So, if you have very deep folder structures (like I do) combined with long-ish, descriptive file names and descriptive folder names (like I often use), then that factor can be a frequent problem when using OnTime.
WORKAROUND: I always (!) explicitly include the containing workbook’s name, which apparently alleviates Excel from having to automatically do so (in its nonsensical manner):
Sub CallOnTime()
Application.OnTime Now + TimeSerial(0, 0, 1), _
"'" & ThisWorkbook.Name & "'!'TargetMacro 37,""Some really long String parameter…""'"
End Sub
Sub TargetMacro(I As Integer, S As String)
MsgBox "I=" & I & ", S=" & S
End Sub
That buys me a lot of string-length real estate to use for the called procedure's arguments.
IMPORTANT: note the inclusion and position of the single-quoted bang delimiter ('!') in the above example.
My guess is that the original designer chose to include the full file-path along with the procedure's containing file name to avoid identification ambiguity with other workbooks running under the same instance of the Excel application. But that's a nonsensical rationale because Excel doesn't allow multiple workbooks with the same name to be opened under a single instance, even if they exist under different folder paths (which, of course, they would have to).
Some additional space-saving tips:
If the parameters include a worksheet specification, use its numeric
sheet Index property instead of its name.
Eliminate any space characters around the comma delimiters.
I've been given a large file with a funny CSV format to parse into a database.
The separator character is a semicolon (;). If one of the fields contains a semicolon it is "escaped" by wrapping it in doublequotes, like this ";".
I have been assured that there will never be two adjacent fields with trailing/ leading doublequotes, so this format should technically be ok.
Now, for parsing it in VBScript I was thinking of
Replacing each instance of ";" with a GUID,
Splitting the line into an array by semicolon,
Running back through the array, replacing the GUIDs with ";"
It seems to be the quickest way. Is there a better way? I guess I could use substrings but this method seems to be acceptable...
Your method sounds fine with the caveat that there's absolutely no possibility that your GUID will occur in the text itself.
On approach I've used for this type of data before is to just split on the semi-colons regardless then, if two adjacent fields end and start with a quote, combine them.
For example:
Pax;is;a;good;guy";" so;says;his;wife.
becomes:
0 Pax
1 is
2 a
3 good
4 guy"
5 " so
6 says
7 his
8 wife.
Then, when you discover that fields 4 and 5 end and start (respectively) with a quote, you combine them by replacing the field 4 closing quote with a semicolon and removing the field 5 opening quote (and joining them of course).
0 Pax
1 is
2 a
3 good
4 guy; so
5 says
6 his
7 wife.
In pseudo-code, given:
input: A string, first character is input[0]; last
character is input[length]. Further, assume one dummy
character, input[length+1]. It can be anything except
; and ". This string is one line of the "CSV" file.
length: positive integer, number of characters in input
Do this:
set start = 0
if input[0] = ';':
you have a blank field in the beginning; do whatever with it
set start = 2
endif
for each c between 1 and length:
next iteration unless string[c] = ';'
if input[c-1] ≠ '"' or input[c+1] ≠ '"': // test for escape sequence ";"
found field consting of half-open range [start,c); do whatever
with it. Note that in the case of empty fields, start≥c, leaving
an empty range
set start = c+1
endif
end foreach
Untested, of course. Debugging code like this is always fun….
The special case of input[0] is to make sure we don't ever look at input[-1]. If you can make input[-1] safe, then you can get rid of that special case. You can also put a dummy character in input[0] and then start your data—and your parsing—from input[1].
One option would be to find instances of the regex:
[^"];[^"]
and then break the string apart with substring:
List<string> ret = new List<string>();
Regex r = new Regex(#"[^""];[^""]");
Match m;
while((m = r.Match(line)).Success)
{
ret.Add(line.Substring(0,m.Index + 1);
line = line.Substring(m.Index + 2);
}
(Sorry about the C#, I don't known VBScript)
Using quotes is normal for .csv files. If you have quotes in the field then you may see opening and closing and the embedded quote all strung together two or three in a row.
If you're using SQL Server you could try using T-SQL to handle everything for you.
SELECT * INTO MyTable FROM OPENDATASOURCE('Microsoft.JET.OLEDB.4.0',
'Data Source=F:\MyDirectory;Extended Properties="text;HDR=No"')...
[MyCsvFile#csv]
That will create and populate "MyTable". Read more on this subject here on SO.
I would recommend using RegEx to break up the strings.
Find every ';' that is not a part of
";" and change it to something else
that does not appear in your fields.
Then go through and replace ";" with ;
Now you have your fields with the correct data.
Most importers can swap out separator characters pretty easily.
This is basically your GUID idea. Just make sure the GUID is unique to your file before you start and you will be fine. I tend to start using 'Z'. After enough 'Z's, you will be unique (sometimes as few as 1-3 will do).
Jacob