topic Re: Removing leading zeroes in a character column in Discussions

Removing leading zeroes in a character column

lou — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 19:47:25 GMT

Can Regex be used to strip leading zeroes from values in a character column? If so, please provide an example. If not, is there another method?

When leading zeroes occur, the number of leading zeroes can vary. There are values in this column that are non-numeric.

Thanks,

Lou

Re: Removing leading zeroes in a character column

txnelson — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 20:25:45 GMT

I am not a regex coder, but here is a real simple example of how to do this using other JSL functions:

Names Default To Here( 1 );
dt = New Table( "Example",
	Add Rows( 3 ),
	New Column( "test",
		Character,
		"Nominal",
		Set Values( {"000123", "0AB", "XYZ"} )
	)
);

For each row(
	while(substr(:test,1,1)=="0",
		:test = substr(:test,2)
	)
);

Re: Removing leading zeroes in a character column

vince_faller — Tue, 04 Jun 2019 20:43:32 GMT

This works for me

Names Default To Here( 1 );
dt = New Table( "Example",
	Add Rows( 3 ),
	New Column( "test",
		Character,
		"Nominal",
		Set Values( {"000123", "0AB", "XYZ", "ABC0"} )
	)
);
dt << New Column("No Leading zeroes", character, <<Formula(Regex( :test, "^0*(.*)", "\1" )));

Re: Removing leading zeroes in a character column

lou — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 12:53:35 GMT

Thanks! That is what I needed.