topic Re: Can ":" be a delimiter? in Discussions

Can ":" be a delimiter?

SpannerHead — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 16:15:30 GMT

I need to delimit a string that contains a colon ":" as a delimiter. I can replace all instances with something else. Can I use it literally?

Re: Can ":" be a delimiter?

jthi — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 16:17:52 GMT

Not sure what you are trying to do? It is just a character, you can use it how ever you want with strings?

Re: Can ":" be a delimiter?

Thierry_S — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 17:18:46 GMT

Hi,

If you try to extract a substring from a string, you can define any delimiter you want (See example below)

Word( 1, "AAA:BBB:CCC", ":" )

If you need to import a text file with ":" as a delimiter, I suggest uploading the raw text into one column and splitting it using the Column Utilities > Text to Columns (defining the column separator as ":").

If neither approach meets your needs, please share an example of what you are trying to achieve.

Best,

Re: Can ":" be a delimiter?

SpannerHead — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 18:27:24 GMT

I guess I had the source of the problem defined incorrectly. If I include ":" as a delimiter together with "_" I seem to be getting red ink and a failed formula.

Re: Can ":" be a delimiter?

monica_beals — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 18:42:20 GMT

Hi,

If you need to specify multiple delimiters with the Word function, it's a single character string containing all the delimiters. For your example, you would specify ":_" as the third argument to Word.

Monica

Re: Can ":" be a delimiter?

jthi — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 18:43:21 GMT

Ah.. So you wish to have two strings to separate using Word? Add all the delimiters into the same string and it should work

Word(2, "A_B:C", "_:")