Empty serial number fields

[notta]

I'm looping through a list of Dell, HP, and some other companies serial numbers, but I'm having a problem dealing with empty fields. I want to continueloop if the field is "empty" I just did a stringlen on each element and I'm finding the "empty" fields can range from 1 character to 5 characters in length so far. I checked the ASCII of some of the empty fields and I'm getting 0 and 32(whitespace and null.)

How would you guys deal with this? Thanks.

Edited October 22, 2008 by notta

[martin]

I'm looping through a list of Dell, HP, and some other companies serial numbers, but I'm having a problem dealing with empty fields. I want to continueloop if the field is "empty" I just did a stringlen on each element and I'm finding the "empty" fields can range from 1 character to 5 characters in length so far. I checked the ASCII of some of the empty fields and I'm getting 0 and 32(whitespace and null.)

How would you guys deal with this? Thanks.

Can you give a small sample of what you are reading, and tell us what separates one field from another?

[notta]

I have a 1-dimensional array with about 1000 serial numbers(1 per element), but some of the elements of the array are empty. Dell sometimes doesn't bother to add the serial to the motherboard on replacements. Well I'm looping through the array and I'm checking if the element is one of the empty fields. If it is I ignore it and continue with the next iteration. I started off checking for "", but that would fail. Then I thought it might only be 1 character like a space or a TAB, so I checked for strlen <= 1, but that failed because some of the strlen returned values up to 5. Even though the one that returned 5 still returned 32 in ASCII. 5 spaces maybe?

Anyway, I'm currently trying and see if that works

if Asc($aSerialNumberArray[$i]) = 0 Or Asc($aSerialNumberArray[$i]) = 32 Then ContinueLoop

but I'm thinking you guys would know a better way to do this.

[martin]

I have a 1-dimensional array with about 1000 serial numbers(1 per element), but some of the elements of the array are empty. Dell sometimes doesn't bother to add the serial to the motherboard on replacements. Well I'm looping through the array and I'm checking if the element is one of the empty fields. If it is I ignore it and continue with the next iteration. I started off checking for "", but that would fail. Then I thought it might only be 1 character like a space or a TAB, so I checked for strlen <= 1, but that failed because some of the strlen returned values up to 5. Even though the one that returned 5 still returned 32 in ASCII. 5 spaces maybe?

Anyway, I'm currently trying and see if that works

if Asc($aSerialNumberArray[$i]) = 0 Or Asc($aSerialNumberArray[$i]) = 32 Then ContinueLoop

but I'm thinking you guys would know a better way to do this.

Asc will only give the code for the first character of a string. (I am assuming that $aSerialNumberArray[$i] is your whole serial number, ie the 1-d array is $aSerialNumberArray)

Maybe if there are only whitespace characters then continueloop

if not StringRegExp($aSerialNumberArray[$i],"\S") then ContinueLoop

[notta]

That's correct. $aSerialNumberArray[$i] is the current serial number I'm checking.

if not StringRegExp($aSerialNumberArray[$i],"\S") then ContinueLoop

I'm sorry, but regular expressions are cryptic to me. Does that check if a whitespace character is anywhere in the string? If so I'm just wondering if a serial number is in the form "DF4HSJ_________" with the trailing white space characters at the end or at the front. Know what I mean?

Edited October 22, 2008 by notta

[PsaltyDS]

That's correct. $aSerialNumberArray[$i] is the current serial number I'm checking.

if not StringRegExp($aSerialNumberArray[$i],"\S") then ContinueLoop

I'm sorry, but regular expressions are cryptic to me. Does that check if a whitespace character is anywhere in the string? If so I'm just wondering if a serial number is in the form "DF4HSJ_________" with the trailing white space characters at the end or at the front. Know what I mean?

Try it this way:

If StringStripWS($aSerialNumberArray[$i], 8) = "" Then ContinueLoop

[martin]

That's correct. $aSerialNumberArray[$i] is the current serial number I'm checking.

if not StringRegExp($aSerialNumberArray[$i],"\S") then ContinueLoop

I'm sorry, but regular expressions are cryptic to me. Does that check if a whitespace character is anywhere in the string? If so I'm just wondering if a serial number is in the form "DF4HSJ_________" with the trailing white space characters at the end or at the front. Know what I mean?

It checks to see if there is anything which is not a whitespace character in the string. If not , ie if there are only whitespace charaters, then continueloop.

PsaltyDS's method is simpler but I thought there could be other white space characters as well as spaces, say a tab or CR or LF.

[PsaltyDS]

It checks to see if there is anything which is not a whitespace character in the string. If not , ie if there are only whitespace charaters, then continueloop.

PsaltyDS's method is simpler but I thought there could be other white space characters as well as spaces, say a tab or CR or LF.

Of course, nobody ever complains if you can find a way to slip a RegExp in there.

Five geek points for martin!

[notta]

Thanks guys.

if Asc($aSerialNumberArray[$i]) = 0 Or Asc($aSerialNumberArray[$i]) = 32 Then ContinueLoop

if not StringRegExp($aSerialNumberArray[$i],"\S") then ContinueLoop

If StringStripWS($aSerialNumberArray[$i], 8) = "" Then ContinueLoop

All 3 are giving me the same exact results. I thinking I'm going to use the geek route Thanks Martin.

Oh yea, I spent 2 hours and 100 lines of debug statements trying to resolve an issue. Using _arraySort and having the syntax as _arraySort($array,1) when you really meant _arraySort($array,0, 1) is bad