I have a dataset with data collected from a form that contains various date and value fields. Not all fields are mandatory so blanks are possible and
in many cases expected, like a DeathDate field for a patient who is still alive.
How do I best represent these blanks in the data?
I represent DeathDate using xsd:dateTime. Blanks or empty spaces are not allowed. All of these are flagged as invalid when validating using Jena RIOT:
foo:DeathDate_1
a foo:Deathdate ;
time:inXSDDatetime " "^^xsd:dateTime .
foo:DeathDate_2
a foo:Deathdate ;
time:inXSDDatetime ""^^xsd:dateTime .
foo:DeathDate_3
a foo:Deathdate ;
time:inXSDDatetime "--"^^xsd:dateTime .
I prefer to not omit the triple because I need to know if it was blank on the source versus a conversion error during construction of my RDF.
What is the best way to code these missing values?
You should represent this by just omitting the triple. That's the meaning of a triple that's "not present": it's information that is (currently) unknown.
Alternatively, you can choose to give it the value "unknown"^^xsd:string when there's no death date. The solution in this case is to not datatype it as an xsd:dateTime, but just as a simple string. It doesn't have to be a string of course, you could use any kind of "special" value for this, e.g. a boolean false - just as long as it's a valid literal value that you can distinguish from actual death dates. This will solve the parsing problem, but IMHO if you do this, you are setting yourself up for headaches in processing the data further down the line (because you will need to ask queries over this data, and they will have to take two different types of values into account, plus the possibility that the field is missing).
I prefer to not omit the triple because I need to know if it was blank
on the source versus a conversion error during construction of my RDF.
This sounds like an XY problem. If there are conversion errors, your application should signal that in another way, e.g. by logging an error. You shouldn't try to solve this by "corrupting" your data.
Related
I have different commands my program is reading in (i.e., print, count, min, max, etc.). These words can also include a number at the end of them (i.e., print3, count1, min2, max6, etc.). I'm trying to figure out a way to extract the command and the number so that I can use both in my code.
I'm struggling to figure out a way to find the last element in the string in order to extract it, in Smalltalk.
You didn't told which incarnation of Smalltalk you use, so I will explain what I would do in Pharo, that is the one I'm familiar with.
As someone that is playing with Pharo a few months at most, I can tell you the sheer amount of classes and methods available can feel overpowering at first, but the environment actually makes easy to find things. For example, when you know the exact input and output you want, but doesn't know if a method already exists somewhere, or its name, the Finder actually allow you to search by giving a example. You can open it in the world menu, as shown bellow:
By default it seeks selectors (method names) matching your input terms:
But this default is not what we need right now, so you must change the option in the upper right box to "Examples", and type in the search field a example of the input, followed by the output you want, both separated by a ".". The input example I used was the string 'max6', followed by the desired result, the number 6. Pharo then gives me a list of methods that match that:
To get what would return us the text part, you can make a new search, changing the example output from number 6 to the string 'max':
Fortunately there is several built-in methods matching the description of your problem.
There are more elegant ways, I suppose, but you can make use of the fact that String>>#asNumber only parses the part it can recognize. So you can do
'print31' reversed asNumber asString reversed asNumber
to give you 31. That only works if there actually is a number at the end.
This is one of those cases where we can presume the input data has a specific form, ie, the only numbers appear at the end of the string, and you want all those numbers. In that case it's not too hard to do, really, just:
numText := 'Kalahari78' select: [ :each | each isDigit ].
num := numText asInteger. "78"
To get the rest of the string without the digits, you can just use this:
'Kalahari78' withoutTrailingDigits. "Kalahari"6
As some of the Pharo "OGs" pointed out, you can take a look at the String class (just type CMD-Return, type in String, hit Return) and you will find an amazing number of methods for all kinds of things. Usually you can get some ideas from those. But then there are times when you really just need an answer!
I have a parameter called Analyst group in this format :
[Dimension].[Analyst Group].&[Nl.Workplace.Foundation]
I want to pass this parameter to another report, to filter data. Its a multi value parameter. But the other report only accepts it in this format : [KanBan].[Analyst Group].&[Nl.Workplace.Foundation]
So im trying to isolate the "Nl.Workplace.Foundation", so i can do the following thing in the Go To Report parameter expression :="[KanBan].[Analyst Group].&["& --Isolated analyst group-- &"]" to create the desired format.
So what i need is to extract the part between .&[ and ]
But i really have no idea how to isolate that part of the string.
Found a solution! If i just use the Parameter.label instead of Parameter.value it automatically does what i want!
A different solution has been found, but I will still answer the initial question. It could help.
So what i need is to extract the part between .&[ and ]
You could use a regex.
This may not be the fastest way but it can handle most of the situations.
So let's assume you have a string containing:
[Dimension].[Analyst Group].&[Nl.Workplace.Foundation]
And you want to get the following string:
Nl.Workplace.Foundation
Just use the following expression:
=System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Match("[Dimension].[Analyst Group].&[Nl.Workplace.Foundation]", "\.&\[(?<NWF>[^]]+)\]").Groups("NWF").Value
In the expression, replace the input string with your dynamic values, like for example:
=System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Match(Fields!Dimension.Value & "." & Fields!AnalystGroup.Value, "\.&\[(?<NWF>[^]]+)\]").Groups("NWF").Value
I'm keeping the formula as simple as possible so that you can easily adapt it, with, say, handling the case where an input string will not have a match (with the above query it will return #Error).
You could do this by adding an IIF() or better, use a custom function that you can reuse in several places and will reduce the length of your expression.
How to fetch compact JSONB from PostgreSQL?
All I got when fetching is with spaces:
SELECT data FROM a_table WHERE id = 1; -- data is JSONB column
{"unique": "bla bla", "foo": {"bar": {"in ...
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ --> spaces
What I want is:
{"unique":"bla bla","foo":{"bar":{"in ...
json_strip_nulls() does exactly what you're looking for:
SELECT json_build_object('a', 1);
returns
{"a" : 1}
But
SELECT json_strip_nulls(json_build_object('a', 1));
returns
{"a":1}
This function not only strips nulls as indicated by its function name and as documented, but incidentally also strips insignificant whitespace. The latter is not explicitly documented in PostgreSQL manual.
Tested in PostgreSQL 11.3, but probably works with earlier versions too.
jsonb is rendered in a standardized format on output. You would have to use json instead to preserve insignificant white space. Per documentation:
Because the json type stores an exact copy of the input text, it will
preserve semantically-insignificant white space between tokens, as
well as the order of keys within JSON objects. Also, if a JSON object
within the value contains the same key more than once, all the
key/value pairs are kept. (The processing functions consider the last
value as the operative one.) By contrast, jsonb does not preserve
white space, does not preserve the order of object keys, and does not
keep duplicate object keys.
The whitespace really shouldn't matter for JSON values.
There is a discussion, started in 2016, about a function jsonb_compact() that will solve the problem... But, it could take years (!).
Pretty solution
(a real solution for this question and this other one)
We must to agree with the PostgreSQL's convention for CAST(var_jsonb AS text). When you need another cast convention, for example to debug or human-readable output, the built-in jsonb_pretty() function is a good choice.
Unfortunately PostgreSQL not offers other choices, like the compact one. So, you can overload jsonb_pretty() with a compact option:
CREATE or replace FUNCTION jsonb_pretty(
jsonb, -- input
compact boolean -- true for compact format
) RETURNS text AS $$
SELECT CASE
WHEN $2=true THEN json_strip_nulls($1::json)::text
ELSE jsonb_pretty($1)
END
$$ LANGUAGE SQL IMMUTABLE;
SELECT jsonb_pretty( jsonb_build_object('a',1, 'bla','bla bla'), true );
-- results {"a":1,"bla":"bla bla"}
Rationale
The JSON standard, RFC 8259 says "... Insignificant whitespace is allowed before or after any of the six structural characters". In other words, the cast from jsonb datatype to text has no canonical form. The PostgreSQL cast convention (using spaces) is arbitrary.
A lot of applications need to minimize a big JSONb output. Two typical ones: minimizing file size of a big JSONb saved by pg_file_write(); output online in a REST interface.
The PostgreSQL team must to appreciate a real CAST procedure, not a parser, but a direct text production from JSONb internal representation.
The workaround — to remove spaces from "JSON text" — is not a simple task, it need a good parser to avoid tampering content. The solution is a parser, it is not a regular expression workaround... And in nowadays the built-in parser is json_strip_nulls(), even as "incidential behavior" parser.
I have an EditText object (et_travel) on my screen that's asking for miles traveled. I grab that data like this:
float travel = Float.parseFloat(et_travel.getText().toString());
if(travel > 40000){
I just discover that if someone puts 40000 in the EditText, everything works fine, but if they put 40,000 (adding a comma to the number), I force close on the float travel = ...statement.
How can I evaluate the number without having a problem from the user adding a comma?
Is this in Java? It appears to be, but I'm wondering if I'm mistaken. Regardless, I would suggest you remove all of the characters from the string that are not of a numeric type. A way to do this may be using a regular expression.
A way to do this in Java may be the following:
String input = et_travel.getText().toString();
input = input.replaceAll("[^0-9]", "");
float travel = Float.parseFloat(input);
...
This way, you strip anything that is a non-numeric value from the string first, and then attempt to do your work. Obviously do some error checking before this (like input is not null and such). One change that is needed however is that you may need to maintain the '.' character (if you're given non-integer values). This would require changing the first regex a bit.
Check here: http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/String.html#replaceAll(java.lang.String, java.lang.String)
What you need is some validation on the input. Before converting the string into a float parse the string. If there are any ','s then remove them. If there is just junk then reject the input, otherwise someone could put a word or anything else in the input and cause havoc in your program.
Check out
inputType to restrict user input
android:inputType="number"
Does any one know how to generate the possible misspelling ?
Example : unemployment
- uemployment
- onemploymnet
-- etc.
If you just want to generate a list of possible misspellings, you might try a tool like this one. Otherwise, in SAS you might be able to use a function like COMPGED to compute a measure of the similarity between the string someone entered, and the one you wanted them to type. If the two are "close enough" by your standard, replace their text with the one you wanted.
Here is an example that computes the Generalized Edit Distance between "unemployment" and a variety of plausible mispellings.
data misspell;
input misspell $16.;
length misspell string $16.;
retain string "unemployment";
GED=compged(misspell, string,'iL');
datalines;
nemployment
uemployment
unmployment
uneployment
unemloyment
unempoyment
unemplyment
unemploment
unemployent
unemploymnt
unemploymet
unemploymen
unemploymenyt
unemploymenty
unemploymenht
unemploymenth
unemploymengt
unemploymentg
unemploymenft
unemploymentf
blahblah
;
proc print data=misspell label;
label GED='Generalized Edit Distance';
var misspell string GED;
run;
Essentially you are trying to develop a list of text strings based on some rule of thumb, such as one letter is missing from the word, that a letter is misplaced into the wrong spot, that one letter was mistyped, etc. The problem is that these rules have to be explicitly defined before you can write the code, in SAS or any other language (this is what Chris was referring to). If your requirement is reduced to this one-wrong-letter scenario then this might be managable; otherwise, the commenters are correct and you can easily create massive lists of incorrect spellings (after all, all combinations except "unemployment" constitute a misspelling of that word).
Having said that, there are many ways in SAS to accomplish this text manipulation (rx functions, some combination of other text-string functions, macros); however, there are probably better ways to accomplish this. I would suggest an external Perl process to generate a text file that can be read into SAS, but other programmers might have better alternatives.
If you are looking for a general spell checker, SAS does have proc spell.
It will take some tweaking to get it working for your situation; it's very old and clunky. It doesn't work well in this case, but you may have better results if you try and use another dictionary? A Google search will show other examples.
filename name temp lrecl=256;
options caps;
data _null_;
file name;
informat name $256.;
input name &;
put name;
cards;
uemployment
onemploymnet
;
proc spell in=name
dictionary=SASHELP.BASE.NAMES
suggest;
run;
options nocaps;