Replacing a literal string in a buffer

I have a comments attribute containing RTF which I am trying to convert to text to be pasted into an excel spreadsheet. The RTF causes problems for Excel, so I convert the DOORS RTF to standard RTF, which leaves residual tags "\par" and \tab". I then replace the tags with spaces for readability, but it doesn't work. My code is as follows (derived from a snipped posted previously on this forum) the code works for a string such as "par" but does not find "\\par". I tried using a regular expression to match \par but that gave me a syntax error for the replace function. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks, Ken.

//Function to strip RTF tags out of the buffer text
void combine ( Buffer b, string s ) 
{
Buffer tmp = create
tmp = s
combine ( b, tmp, 0 )
delete tmp
}

Buffer replace ( Buffer b, string toReplace, string newVal )
{
Buffer rez = create
int pivot = 0
int iposition = contains ( b, toReplace, pivot )
while ( iposition != -1 ) 
{
combine ( rez, b, pivot, iposition-1 )
combine ( rez, newVal )
pivot = iposition + length toReplace
iposition = contains ( b, toReplace, pivot )
}
combine ( rez, b, pivot )
return rez
}

   // later...
   for o in m do
    {
     text_Comments = o."Comments"
     text_Comments=exportRTFString(text_Comments)
 
   Buffer b1 = create (5000) 
   b1=text_Comments
     Buffer newBuff = replace( b1, "\\par", " " )
     list = list "\t" ObjId "\t" (tempStringOf newBuff) "\n"
     delete(b1)
     delete newBuff
    }

Re: Replacing a literal string in a buffer
llandale - Tue Jun 02 20:08:48 EDT 2015

Consider the following commands to retrieve info from a "Comments" Text attribute:

• Results = richTextWithOle(o."Comments")   // full rich text and any OLE therein
• Results = richText(o."Comments")    // full rich text as above, but without any OLE diagrams
• Results = o."Commens"    // just the raw text, no rich text at all

I think you need that last one then you can abandon dealing with rich-text codes.

Then replace all '\n' and '\t' characters with a space.  I think that looks like this:

char c

Buffer bResults = create()

bResults += o."Comments"

int len = length(bResults), i

for (i=0; i<len; i++)

{  c = bResults[i]

   if (c == '\n' or c == '\t') then set(bResults, i, ' ')

}

do some export of tempStringOf(bResults) to Excel

-Louie

Re: Replacing a literal string in a buffer
mcnairk - Thu Jun 04 08:37:32 EDT 2015

Thanks Louie, I'll give this a try and let you know...Ken.

Re: Replacing a literal string in a buffer
Mathias Mamsch - Thu Jun 04 09:49:58 EDT 2015

By the way: If you want to match a \par inside a regular expression you need to use to escape the backslashes once for the regular expression \\par ... And if you want to put this in a string literal you have to escape each backslash again for DXL:

string s = "\\\\par"

print s   // prints "\\par"

regexp  s // matches "\par"

Additionally you should consider a check, if an uneven number of backslashes were matched (which means, that you are not looking at an literal "\par" inside the RTF ...

Regards, Mathias

Re: Replacing a literal string in a buffer
mcnairk - Thu Jun 04 14:08:32 EDT 2015

Two problems:

- E- DXL: <Line:194> incorrect arguments for (+=) if I try to assign the attribute directly into the buffer, which goes way if I do the following:

text_Comments = o."Comments"

bResults += text_Comments

- This is a lot simpler than my original code, but gives the same output containing \par and \tab within the text.I have to try Matthias' suggestion to get rid of this...

Re: Replacing a literal string in a buffer
mcnairk - Thu Jun 04 14:48:13 EDT 2015

Thanks to both of you I have now resolved this problem. I♥DXL!