Hi. I'm interested in a function that could be used to remove repeated characters from a string.
What inspired this wish list request? If I have a string that contains the same repeated character and sometimes I want to remove all but one instance of that character. For instance, I have a string like "input1;;;;input2;;;input3", and I want to convert it to "input1;input2;input3". I assumed I could just use SubstituteInto(str, ";;", ";") and it would recursively remove all repeated ";", but did not. Instead it just would replace only the first 2 semicolons with a single semicolon, then stop.
str = "input1;;;input2;;;input3";
SubstituteInto(str, ";;", ";");
Show(str); //returns "input1;;input2;;;input3"
Note that the first set of semicolons was reduced from 3 to only 2, and the second set was not affected at all. My current workaround is to embed this in a while loop:
curlen = Length(str) + 1;
While(Length(str) < curlen,
SubstituteInto(str, ";;", ";");
); //returns "input1;input2;input3"
What is the improvement you would like to see? I'd like to see a modification to the Substitute(), SubstituteInto(), and Munger() functions to include a "<< RECURSE" message that just makes it perform the same operation as the code above:
Substitute(x, patternString1, replacementString1, ..., < <<IGNORECASE >, < <<RECURSE >);
SubstituteInto(x, patternString1, replacementString1, ..., < <<IGNORECASE >, < <<RECURSE >);
Munger(s, startpos, findstringOrNChars, <replacestring, < <<RECURSE > >);
Alternatively, rather that change established functions, perhaps a new function could be created called "Trim Multiple()"
Trim Multiple(s, patternString);
where s is a string and patternString is one or more characters. The code will search through s for any instances of patternString that are repeated consecutively. Where it finds one, it replaces it with just one instance of patternString and continues searching s for more instances of patternString.
Why is this idea important? This would reduce the complexity of users' codes. It would also be a way to help to highlight to users that the Substitute()/SubstituteInto()/Munger() functions are -not- inherently recursive, and in doing so this would help prevent bugs.