Workflow Definition Language `formatDateTime` bug? - string

I'm working with the following Azure Logic App expression (Workflow Definition Language (WDL)):
formatDateTime(
utcNow(),
'MM'
)
The WDL docs say that the formatDateTime function should return with a string value.
This is what I'm seeing...
...EXCEPT, the resulting string is impervious to further string manipulation in WDL!
Example:
To get rid of the leading space in " 02":
trim (trim(formatDateTime(utcNow(),'MM'))) ...OR
replace (replace(formatDateTime(utcNow(),'MM'), ' ', '')) should work
But neither of these work, the resulting " 02" remains as an untrimmed string
Similar with int (int(trim(formatDateTime(utcNow(),'MM')))).
The result is not an int, but rather the same " 02" string!
Is this a WDL bug?
Likely contributing this issue as well.

Related

SPLIT results with separator

I'm trying to split a string (separated with the HTML break tag), without deleting the break tag. I think it's pretty messy to add a break as string after splitting, so is there any function/possibility to keep the separator while "splitting"?
Example:
<HTML><BODY><p>some text<br/>some more text</p></BODY></HTML>
Expected result:
<HTML><BODY><p>some text<br/>
some more text</p></BODY></HTML>
As far as I know SPLIT removes the separator from the results and it doesn't seem like you can change that.
But you could create your own separator by first replacing your <br/> tag with <br/> plus an arbitrary string that is highly unlikely to ever appear in your HTML source, and then split the HTML using this arbitrary string as a separator instead.
types:
begin of t_result,
segment(2000) type c,
end of t_result.
DATA:
source type string,
separator type string,
brtag type string,
repl type string,
result_tab type standard table of t_result,
result_row TYPE t_result.
brtag = '<br/>'.
separator = '|***SEP***|'.
concatenate brtag separator into repl.
source = '<HTML><BODY><p>some text<br/>some more text</p></BODY></HTML>'.
replace all occurrences of brtag in source with repl.
split source at separator into table result_tab.
LOOP AT result_tab INTO result_row.
WRITE:
result_row-segment.
ENDLOOP.
Output of that example report:
<HTML><BODY><p>some text<br/>
some more text</p></BODY></HTML>
The caveat of this solution is that your custom separator, if not chosen with some care, might appear in your HTML source on its own. I therefore would choose an arbitrary string with a special character or two that would be encoded in HTML (like umlauts) and therefore not appear in your source.
Just use the replace command. replace <br/> with <br/>CR_LF
The CR_LF refers to the carriage return linefeed character.
In more complex cases you can use regex expressions in abap.
class ZTEST_SO definition public create public .
public section.
methods t1.
ENDCLASS.
CLASS ZTEST_SO IMPLEMENTATION.
METHOD T1.
data: my_break type string,
my_string type string
value '<HTML><BODY><p>some text<br/>some more text</p></BODY></HTML>'.
my_break = '<br/>' && CL_ABAP_CHAR_UTILITIES=>CR_LF.
replace all occurrences of '<br/>' in my_string with my_break in character mode.
"check my_string in the debugger :)
"<HTML><BODY><p>some text<br/>
"some more text</p></BODY></HTML>
ENDMETHOD.
ENDCLASS.

invalid input syntax for type numeric: " "

I'm getting this message in Redshift: invalid input syntax for type numeric: " " , even after trying to implement the advice found in SO.
I am trying to convert text to number.
In my inner join, I try to make sure that the text being processed is first converted to null when there is an empty string, like so:
nullif(trim(atl.original_pricev::text),'') as original_price
... I noticed from a related post on coalesce that you have to convert the value to text before you can try and nullif it.
Then in the outer join, I test to see that there's a limited set of acceptable characters and if this test is met I try to do the to_number conversion:
,case
when regexp_instr(trim(atl.original_price),'[^0-9.$,]')=0
then to_number(atl.original_price,'FM999999999D00')
else null
end as original_price2
At this point I get the above error and unfortunately I can't see the details in datagrip to get the offending value.
So my questions are:
I notice that there is an empty space in my error message:
invalid input syntax for type numeric: " " . Does this error have the exact same meaning as
invalid input syntax for type numeric:'' which is what I see in similar posts??
Of course: what am I doing wrong?
Thanks!
It's hard to know for sure without some data and the complete code to try and reproduce the example, but as some have mentioned in the comments the most likely cause is the to_number() function you are using.
In the earlier code fragment you are converting original_price to text (string) and then substituting an empty string ('') if the value is NULL. Calling the to_number() function on an empty string will give you the error described.
Without the full SQL statement it's not clear why you're putting the nullif() function around the original_price in the "inner join" or how whether the CASE statement is really in an outer join clause or one of the columns returned by the query. However you could perhaps alter the nullif() to substitute a value that can be converted to a number e.g. '0.00' instead of ''.
Sorry I couldn't share real data. I spent the weekend testing small sets to try and trap the error. I found that the error was caused by the input string having no numbers, which is permitted by my regex filter:
when regexp_instr(trim(atl.original_price),'[^0-9.$,]') .
I wrongly expected that a non numeric string like "$" would evaluate to NULL and then the to_number function would = NULL . But from experimenting it seems that it needs at least one number somewhere in the string. Otherwise it reduces the string argument to an empty string prior to running the to_number formatting and chokes.
For example select to_number(trim('$1'::text),'FM999999999999D00') will evaluate to 1 but select to_number(trim('$A'::text),'FM999999999999D00') will throw the empty string error.
My fix was to add an additional regex to my initial filter:
and regexp_instr(atl.original_price2,'[0-9]')>0 .
This ensures that at least one number will be in the string and after that the empty string error went away.
Hope my learning experience helps someone else.

Display the specific part of the string in PostgreSQL 9.3

I have a string to modify as per the requirements.
For example:
The given string is:
str1 varchar = '123,456,789';
I want to show the string as:
'456,789'
Note: The first part (delimited) with comma, I want to remove from string and show the rest of string.
In SQL Server I used STUFF() function.
SELECT STUFF('123,456,789',1,4,'');
Result:
456,789
Question: Is there any string function in PostgreSQL 9.3 version to do the same job?
you can use regular expressions:
select substring('123,456,789' from ',(.*)$');
The comma matches the first comma found in the string. The part inside the brackets (.*) is returned from the function. The symbol $ means the end of the string.
A alternative solution without regular expressions:
select str, substring(str from position(',' in str)+1 for length(str)) from
(select '123,456,789'::text as str) as foo;
You could first turn the string to array and return second and third cell:
select array_to_string((regexp_split_to_array('123,456,789', ','))[2:3], ',')
Or you could use substring-function with regular expressions (pattern matching):
SELECT substring('123,456,789' from '[0-9]+,([0-9]+,[0-9]+)')
[0-9]+ means one or more digits
parentheses tell to return that part from the string
Both solutions work on your specific string.
Your The SQL Server example indicates you just want to remove the first 4 characters, which makes the rest of your question seem misleading because it completely ignores what's in the string. Only the positions matters.
Be that as it may, the simple and cheap way to cut off leading characters is with right():
SELECT right('123,456,789', -4);
SQL Fiddle.

Reading from a string using sscanf in Matlab

I'm trying to read a string in a specific format
RealSociedad
this is one example of string and what I want to extract is the name of the team.
I've tried something like this,
houseteam = sscanf(str, '%s');
but it does not work, why?
You can use regexprep like you did in your post above to do this for you. Even though your post says to use sscanf and from the comments in your post, you'd like to see this done using regexprep. You would have to do this using two nested regexprep calls, and you can retrieve the team name (i.e. RealSociedad) like so, given that str is in the format that you have provided:
str = 'RealSociedad';
houseteam = regexprep(regexprep(str, '^<a(.*)">', ''), '</a>$', '')
This looks very intimidating, but let's break this up. First, look at this statement:
regexprep(str, '^<a(.*)">', '')
How regexprep works is you specify the string you want to analyze, the pattern you are searching for, then what you want to replace this pattern with. The pattern we are looking for is:
^<a(.*)">
This says you are looking for patterns where the beginning of the string starts with a a<. After this, the (.*)"> is performing a greedy evaluation. This is saying that we want to find the longest sequence of characters until we reach the characters of ">. As such, what the regular expression will match is the following string:
<ahref="/teams/spain/real-sociedad-de-futbol/2028/">
We then replace this with a blank string. As such, the output of the first regexprep call will be this:
RealSociedad</a>
We want to get rid of the </a> string, and so we would make another regexprep call where we look for the </a> at the end of the string, then replace this with the blank string yet again. The pattern you are looking for is thus:
</a>$
The dollar sign ($) symbolizes that this pattern should appear at the end of the string. If we find such a pattern, we will replace it with the blank string. Therefore, what we get in the end is:
RealSociedad
Found a solution. So, %s stops when it finds a space.
str = regexprep(str, '<', ' <');
str = regexprep(str, '>', '> ');
houseteam = sscanf(str, '%*s %s %*s');
This will create a space between my desired string.

C# 4.0 function to check for first four characters in the string

I need to validate for valid code name.
So, my string can have values like below:
String test = "C000. ", "C010. ", "C020. ", "C030. ", "CA00. ","C0B0. ","C00C. "
So my function needs to validate below conditions:
It should start with C
After that next 3 characters should be numeric before .
Rest it can be anything.
So in above string values, only ["C000.", "C010.", "C020.", "C030."] are valid ones.
EDIT:
Below is the code I tried:
if (nameObject.Title.StartsWith(String.Format("^[C][0-9]{3}$",nameObject.Title)))
I'd suggest a regex, for example (written off the top of my head, may need work):
string s = "C030.";
Regex reg = new Regex("C[0-9]{3,3}\\.");
bool isMatch = reg.IsMatch(s);
This regex should do the trick:
Regex.IsMatch(input, #"C[0-9]{3}\..*")
Check out http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/Working_with_Strings_in_C_Sharp
for a quick tutorial on (among other things) individual access of string elements, so you can test each element for your criteria.
If you think your criteria may change, using regular expressions gives you maximum flexibility (but is more runtime intensive than regular string-element evaluation). In your case, it may be overkill, IMHO.

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