I need my VB.net to write a file containing the following line
objWriter.WriteLine ("TEXTA " (FILEA) " TEXTB")
Unfortunatly the variable (FILEA) is causing problems i now get the error
Comma, ')', or valid expression continuation expected.
Could someone explain this please?
You're not concatenating (joining) the strings proerly...
objWriter.WriteLine ("TEXTA " & FILEA & " TEXTB")
A better style to get into the habit of using is:
objWriter.WriteLine (string.format("TEXTA {0} TEXTB", FILEA))
The FILEA variable replaces the {0} placeholder in the format string. Depending on what the writer you're using is, you may have a formatted overload so you could just do:
objWriter.WriteLine ("TEXTA {0} TEXTB", FILEA)
And since you asked for an explanation;
The compiler is asking you what exactly you want it to do - you've given it 3 variables (String, variable, String) and haven't told it that you want to join them together - It's saying that after the first string "TEXTA", there should either be the closing bracket (to end the method call), a comma (to pass another parameter to the method) OR a "valid continuation expression" - ie something that tells it what to do with the next bit. in this case, you want a continuation expression, specifically an ampersand to signify "concatenate with the next 'thing'".
Presumably you're looking for string concatenation? Try this:
objWriter.WriteLine("TEXTA" & FILEA & "TEXTB");
Note that FILEA isn't exactly a conventional variable name... which leads me to suspect there may be something else you're trying to achieve. Could you give more details?
Related
As mentioned before in some questions with "Progress-4GL" and "OpenEdge" tags, I'm working with AppBuilder and Procedure editor. As a result, the debugging possibilities are extremely limited: for knowing the value of a variable, I need to do show them on screen, something like this:
MESSAGE "temp1=[" temp1 "], temp2=[" temp2 "]" VIEW-AS ALERT-BOX.
I can also put that information in a logfile, but that's not the main point here.
I would like to write a procedure, which can handle this, something like:
PROCEDURE SHOW_VARIABLES_AND_VALUES (INPUT I1, INPUT I2, ...):
1. <put parameter names and values together inside one string> => """I1="" I1"
2. <do this for all input parameters (the number is unknown)> => """I1="" I1, ""I2="" I2, ..."
3. <how to use this (MESSAGE VIEW-AS ALERT-BOX, LOG, ...) there I'll know what to do>
Does anybody know how to handle the fist two points (put variable name and value together and handle an unknown number of input parameters)?
Thanks in advance
You can use SUBSTITUTE function.
MESSAGE SUBSTITUTE ("temp1=&1 ~ntemp2=&2 ~n temp3=&3",
temp1,
temp2,
temp3) VIEW-AS ALERT-BOX.
Unfortunately there is no dynamic access to variables or parameters. So there's no way to automatically add all input parameters to a message string. Also there is no anytype parameter type in the ABL - for user defined functions or procedures. So you'd have to use the STRING() function a lot to convert your input parameters to string as the best fit parameter for everything.
The built in SUBSTITUTE function on the other hand can handle anytype of arguments. So temp1, temp2 and temp3 can actually be variables or parameters of any datatype.
As mentioned in one of my comments on one of your earlier questions: Give the OpenEdge debugger a chance. The debugger outside of Progress Developer studio looks historic. But it does it's job.
Meanwhile I've decided to use following system (as my request seems to be impossible):
MESSAGE "temp1=[" temp1 "]~n" ~
"temp2=[" temp2 "]~n" ~
"temp3=[" temp3 "]~n" ~
"temp4=[" temp4 "]" ~
VIEW-AS ALERT-BOX.
In order to make it easy to work with, I've found out the following keyboard "shortcut" for the tilde character: ALT+0126.
As indicated by Stefan, this is far better (no tilde and no shortcut needed):
MESSAGE "temp1=[" temp1 "]" SKIP
"temp2=[" temp2 "]" SKIP
"temp3=[" temp3 "]" SKIP
"temp4=[" temp4 "]" SKIP
VIEW-AS ALERT-BOX.
I have a localized string that looks something like this in English:
"
5 Mile(s)
5,252 Step(s)
"
My app is localized both in left-to-right and right-to-left languages so I don't want to make assumptions either about the ordering of the step(s) or about the formatting of the number (e.g. 5,252 can be 5.252 depending on user locale). So I need to account for possibilities that can include things like
Step(s) 5.252
as well as what's above.
A few other caveats
All I know is that if the Step(s) line is in there, it will be on its own line (hence in my regex I require \n at each end of the string)
No guarantee that the Mile(s) information will be in the string at all, let alone whether it will be before or after Step(s)
Here's my attempt at pattern extraction:
NSString *patternString = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"\\n(([0-9,\\.]*)\s*%#|%#\s*([0-9,\\.]*))\\n",
NSLocalizedString(#"Step(s)",nil), NSLocalizedString(#"Step(s)",nil)];
There appear to be two problems with this:
XCode is indicating Unknown escape sequence '\s' for the second \s in the pattern string above
No matches are being found even for strings like the following:
0.2 Mile(s)
1,482 Step(s)
Ideally I would extract the 1,482 out of this string in a way that is localization friendly. How should I modify my regex?
as far as the regex, perhaps this approach might work - it simply matches (with named groups) each couplet of numbers in sequence, with the assumption the first is miles and the second is steps. Decimals in the . or , form are optional:
(?<miles>\d+(?:[.,]\d+)?).*?(?<steps>\d+(?:[.,]\d+)?)
(and i think it should be \\s) - i'm not an ios guy, but if you can use a regex literal it would be way more readable.
regular expression demo
First I'd like to ask - Why is Mile(s) mentioned in the question at all?
And now to my two bits - you could simply use a positive look-ahead:
^(?=.*Step\(s\))[^\d]*(\d+(?:[.,]\d+)?)
It makes sure the expected word is present on the line, and then captures the number on it, allowing for localized, optional, decimal separator and decimals. This way it doesn't matter if the numer is before, or after, the "word".
It doesn't take localization of the "word" into account, but that you seem to have handled by yourself ;)
See it here at regex101.
Your regex is close, although in Obj-C you need to double-escape the \s and (s):
^(([0-9,.]*)\\s*%#|%#\\s*([0-9,.]*))$
In your NSLocalizedString you likely also need to escape the parentheses enclosing (s):
NSString *patternString = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"^(([\\d,.]+)\\s%#|%#\\s([\\d,.]+))$",
NSLocalizedString(#"Step\\(s\\)",nil), NSLocalizedString(#"Step\\(s\\)",nil)];
If you don't escape (s) then the regex engine is probably going to interpret it as a capture group.
Looking at NSLog you can see what the pattern actually reads like:
NSLog(#"patternString: %#", patternString);
Output:
patternString: ^(([\d,.]+)\sStep\(s\)|Step\(s\)\s([\d,.]+))$
Since you mentioned the Mile(s) part may not be in the string at all I'm assuming it isn't relevant to the regular expression. As I understand from the question, you just need to capture the number of steps and nothing else. On this basis, here's a modified version of your existing regex:
NSString *patternString =
[NSString stringWithFormat:#"^(?:([0-9,.]*)\\s*%#|%#\\s*([0-9,.]*))$",
NSLocalizedString(#"Step\\(s\\)",nil), NSLocalizedString(#"Step\\(s\\)",nil)];
Demo:
https://www.regex101.com/r/Q6ff1b/1
This is based on the following tips/modifications:
Use the m (= UREGEX_MULTILINE) flag option when creating the regex to specify that ^ and $ match the start and end of each line. This is more sophisticated than using \n as it will also handle the start and end of the string where this might not be present. See here.
Always use a double backslash (\\) for regex escaping - otherwise NSString will interpret the single backslash to be escaping the next character and convert it before it gets to the regex.
Literal parentheses need to be escaped - e.g. Step\\(s\\) instead of Step(s).
Characters within a character class (i.e. anything within the [] square brackets) don't need to be escaped - so it would be . rather than \\. - the latter.
If you are using (x|y|...) as a choice and don't need it to be a capturing group, use ?: after the first parenthesis to ensure it doesn't get captured - i.e. (?:x|y|...).
I'm making a fully working add and subtract program as a nice little easy project. One thing I would love to know is if there is a way to restrict input to certain characters (such as 1 and 0 for the binary inputs and A and B for the add or subtract inputs). I could always replace all characters that aren't these with empty strings to get rid of them, but doing something like this is quite tedious.
Here is some simple code to filter out the specified characters from a user's input:
local filter = "10abAB"
local input = io.read()
input = input:gsub("[^" .. filter .. "]", "")
The filter variable is just set to whatever characters you want to be allowed in the user's input. As an example, if you want to allow c, add c: local filter = "10abcABC".
Although I assume that you get input from io.read(), it is possible that you get it from somewhere else, so you can just replace io.read() with whatever you need there.
The third line of code in my example is what actually filters out the text. It uses string:gsub to do this, meaning that it could also be written like this:
input = string.gsub(input, "[^" .. filter .. "]", "").
The benefit of writing it like this is that it's clear that input is meant to be a string.
The gsub pattern is [^10abAB], which means that any characters that aren't part of that pattern will be filtered out, due to the ^ before them and the replacement pattern, which is the empty string that is the last argument in the method call.
Bonus super-short one-liner that you probably shouldn't use:
local input = io.read():gsub("[^10abAB]", "")
I have this code
Dim parts As New List(Of String)(Regex.Split(RichTextBox2.Text, "~\d"))
That splits lines in this format into parts:
~1Hello~2~3Bye~4~5Morning~6
So if I do MsgBox(parts(5)), it will show me "Morning".
I want to do the exact same thing, but now my line is arranged like this:
Hello, Bye, Morning,
Change "~\d" to ", ?". The question mark after the space means that the space is optional.
Alternatively, assuming that you are only looking for single words, instead of Regex.Split you could use Regex.Matches with the regular expression "\w+".
I am trying to use a copy command for Windows and we have directories such as c:\oracle.
While trying to execute one such, we get the following error:
source_file=folder+"\"
^
SyntaxError: Lexical error at line 17, column 23. Encountered: "\r" (13), after : ""
Here folder is my path of c:\oracle and while trying to add file to it like:
source=folder+"\"+src_file
I am not able to do so. Any suggestion on how to solve this issue?
I tried with / but my copy windows calling source in os.command is getting "the syntax is incorrect" and the only way to solve it is to use \ but I am getting the above error in doing so.
Please suggest. Thanks for your help
Thanks.
Short answer:
You need:
source_file = folder + "\\" + src_file
Long answer:
The problem with
source_file = folder + "\" + src_file
is that \ is the escape character. What it's doing in this particular case is escaping the " so that it's treated as a character of the string rather than the string terminator, similar to:
source_file = folder + "X + src_file
which would have the same problem.
In other words, you're trying to construct a string consisting of ", some other text and the end of line (\r, the carriage return character). That's where your error is coming from:
Encountered: "\r" (13)
Paxdiablo is absolutely correct about why \ isn't working for you. However, you could also solve your problem by using os.path.normpath instead of trying to construct the proper platform-specific path characters yourself.
In all programming languages I know of, you can't put a quote inside a string like this: "this is a quote: "." The reason for this is that the first quote opens the string, the second then closes it (!), and then the third one opens another string - with the following two problems:
whatever is between the quotes #2 and #3 is probably not valid code;
the quote #3 is probably not being closed.
There are two common mechanisms of solving this: doubling and escaping. Escaping is far more common, and what it means is you put a special character (usually \) in front of characters that you don't want to be interpreted in their usual value. Thus, "no, *this* is a quote: \"." is a proper string, where the quote #2 is not closing the string - and the character \ does not appear.
However, now you have another problem - how do you actually make the escape character appear in a string? Simple: escape it! "This is an escape: \\!" is how you do it: the backslash #1 is the escape character, and the backslash #2 is the escapee: it will not be interpreted with its usual escape semantics, but as a simple backslash character.
Thus, your line should say this:
source=folder+"\\"+src_file
BTW: upvote for both #paxdiablo (who got in before my diatribe) and #Nick (who has a proper Pythonic way to do what you want to do)