Converting Text to Numeric

[evangelmike]

Greetings! I am writing a macro to pick the stock price off a web page. The following instructions indeed pick the stock price, but the result is text instead of numeric. My instructions are:

GetTextInRect>162,404,198,423,sPriceCRLF
StringReplace>sPriceCRLF, ,,PriceCRLF
StringReplace>PriceCRLF,CRLF,,Price

If I use MessageModal to display the price, the result would be text such as 1.10. But if I then add 1.0 and display the result, I get a display of 1.10+1.0 instead of 2.10. Has anyone written a routine to convert text to numeric. I didn't want to reinvent the wheel. Thanks for any comments, code, or suggestions.

[Marcus Tettmar]

Macro Scheduler automatically converts from text to numeric when you do a calculation like that. So the fact that isn't happening for you tells me there must be a space or some other non-numeric character in the string. You might just need to trim it. Eg.:

Code: Select all

VBSTART
VBEND

Let>text= 1.01  
VBEval>Trim("%text%"),num
Let>num=num+1
MessageModal>num

Note that

Note the space in front of 1.01 which means that text is text, not numeric. After trimming it we add 1 to it and we get 2.01 proving that the conversion is automatic so long as the data contains only numbers.

[evangelmike]

Greetings! Thanks immensely! I modified my code as follows. It works great when "right"=193. But if "right" is 194, there is an extra nonprintable character at the end of the string sPriceCRLF, which none of the below logic will remove. I really need to use 194 so I can accomodate larger stock prices. All suggestions, comments, code greatly welcomed.

GetTextInRect>162,385,193,406,sPriceCRLF
// NOTE: when I use right=194 (instead of 193), a nonprintable char
// appears at end of string which TRIM won't remove.
StringReplace>sPriceCRLF, ,,PriceCRLF
StringReplace>PriceCRLF, ,,PriceCRLF
StringReplace>PriceCRLF,CRLF,,Price

VBSTART
VBEND

VBEval>Trim("%Price%"),num
MessageModal>num
Let>num=num+1
MessageModal>num

[Marcus Tettmar]

Ok, like you say, some non-space non-printable char in there somewhere. Here's a subroutine which will remove all characters except the ones you want:

Code: Select all

SRT>CleanString
  Let>CleanString_Result=
  Let>valid_chars=.0123456789
  Length>CleanString_Var_1,len
  Let>k=0
  Repeat>k
    Let>k=k+1
    MidStr>myStr,k,1,this_char
    Position>this_char,valid_chars,1,p
    If>p>0
      Let>CleanString_Result=%CleanString_Result%%this_char%
    Endif
  Until>k=len
End>CleanString

Use it like this:

Code: Select all

Let>myStr= 4.5 *
GoSub>CleanString,myStr
MessageModal>CleanString_Result

Pass the clipboard value to the subroutine and it should come back clean!

This SRT could be converted for alphanumerics by changing valid_chars to

Code: Select all

Let>valid_chars=0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Or any other series of characters you want.

[Marcus Tettmar]

Nearly forgot about RegEx!

RegEx to remove all non numerics:

Code: Select all

RegEx>[^.0123456789],myStr,0,matches,num,1,,myStr

RegEx to remove all control chars:

Code: Select all

RegEx>[\x00-\x1f],myStr,0,matches,num,1,,myStr

[evangelmike]

Hi Marcus! Thanks for your kind help.

It is interesting to note that if I omit either a StringReplace to remove blanks or a StringReplace to remove to remove the appended CRLF, I get the message "Error in Position Command" when I run the below instructions. Why would that be? If I include the StringReplaces, the code runs without error.

GetTextInRect>162,403,192,424,sPriceCRLF
StringReplace>sPriceCRLF, ,,PriceCRLF
StringReplace>PriceCRLF,CRLF,,Price
MessageModal>%Price%
GoSub>CleanString,Price
// Next instruction to verify that result is indeed numeric:
Let>Price=Price+1.5
MessageModal>%Price%

[jpuziano]

RegEx to remove all control chars:

Code: Select all

RegEx>[\x00-\x1f],myStr,0,matches,num,1,,myStr

Hi Marcus,

Wikipedia includes ascii 127 (delete) as a control character: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_character

I'm not sure if the delete character would cause problems if passed to a VBScript function but I strip them out as well to be safe.

RegEx>[controlChar],myStr,1,matches,num,1,,myStr

And if you didn't want to strip 127 (delete), you could use [gremlin].

[controlChar]
characters 0-31, 127 (careful: includes most whitespace)

[gremlin]
characters 0-31. The definition for [gremlin] is more cautious than in some products.

Take care

[Neib74656]

Reviving a very old thread here.

Hello Everyone,

I have a need for something similar to this but I can't seem to get it to work. I am using OCRarea to capture text and symbols on my screen. The OCRarea will give 1 of two possible results.

1)string - 2 @
2)string - 2 ©

I want to isolate the numeric value and then use it in a calculation here is my current code

Code: Select all

OCRArea>C,D,E,F,myStr
regex>[^.0123456789],myStr,0,matches,num,1,,myStr
RegEx>[\x00-\x1f],myStr,0,matches,num,1,,W
messagemodal>W
let>W+1=W
messagemodal>W

The first messagemodal returns 2 but so does the second one when it should return 3 if I am understanding correctly?

Thanks as always!

[Neib74656]

Reviving a very old thread here.

Hello Everyone,

I have a need for something similar to this but I can't seem to get it to work. I am using OCRarea to capture text and symbols on my screen. The OCRarea will give 1 of two possible results.

1)string - 2 @
2)string - 2 ©

I want to isolate the numeric value and then use it in a calculation here is my current code

Code: Select all

OCRArea>C,D,E,F,myStr
regex>[^.0123456789],myStr,0,matches,num,1,,myStr
RegEx>[\x00-\x1f],myStr,0,matches,num,1,,W
messagemodal>W
let>W+1=W
messagemodal>W

The first messagemodal returns 2 but so does the second one when it should return 3 if I am understanding correctly?

Thanks as always!

Realized my error. It actually is working as intended but my let syntax is wrong. it should be let>W=W+1

Please ignore me and ........... maybe I will go away

[hagchr]

Small tip. If you are just looking for the digit/number you can search for that directly eg:

Code: Select all

regex>\d,myStr,0,matches,num,0

\d will look for a digit, and your number will be in matches_1.

[Neib74656]

Small tip. If you are just looking for the digit/number you can search for that directly eg:

Code: Select all

regex>\d,myStr,0,matches,num,0

\d will look for a digit, and your number will be in matches_1.

Does it look for only a single digit? I used this as an example but the number can be anywhere from 1 - 99999.

[hagchr]

Sorry, I thought you were just looking for one digit. Simply change from \d (one digit) to \d+ (one or more digits) and you should catch all.

[Neib74656]

Sorry, I thought you were just looking for one digit. Simply change from \d (one digit) to \d+ (one or more digits) and you should catch all.

No worries works perfectly thanks very much!