Text manipulation with GAMAP

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String basics

Creating text and numeric strings

We may form a string of text characters in IDL in the following ways:

  1. by placing text between single and double quotes
  2. by parsing a number with IDL's STRING function

For example: 

; Create a text string 
IDL> str1 = 'hello world'
IDL> help, str1
STR1            STRING    = 'hello world'
 
; Create a numeric string
IDL> num2 = 3.14159
IDL> str2 = string( num2 )   
IDL> help, str2  
STR2            STRING    = '      3.14159'

; Strip leading and trailing white space 
IDL> str2 = strtrim( str2, 2 )
IDL> help, str2
STR2            STRING    = '3.14159'

In the last example, we used IDL's STRTRIM function to strip the leading and trailing whitespace.

Equivalence of strings and byte arrays

In IDL, a string of text characters is equivalent to an array of byte values. A byte is a collection of 8 bits and may express values from 0-255. The ASCII collating sequence has 255 values. (Actually, the original ASCII table had 128 values, but this was later extended to 255 values to include special characters.) One byte represents a single ASCII text character.

This means that it is easy to convert between strings and bytes in IDL. If you have an array of bytes, you can use any of the IDL string routines on them, for example: 

IDL> byte_array = [ 72B, 69B, 76B, 76B, 79B ]
IDL> help, byte_array    
BYTE_ARRAY      BYTE      = Array[5]
IDL> print, strtrim( byte_array, 2 ) 
HELLO

GAMAP comes with a very useful routine called STR2BYTE. This allows you to take a text string and to convert it into the equivalent array of bytes. 

IDL> str = 'IDL is neat!'
IDL> byte_array = str2byte( str, strlen( str ) )
IDL> help, byte_array
BYTE_ARRAY      BYTE      = Array[12]
IDL> print, byte_array   
  73  68  76  32 105 115  32 110 101  97 116  33

Note that we used IDL's STRLEN function to return the length of the string.

Representing special characters

We must specify some special non-printing ASCII characters with their byte value. For exaaple, the horizontal tab character is the 9th character in the ASCII table, so we may specify that as: 

IDL> tab = 9B
IDL> help, tab
TAB             BYTE      =    9
IDL> str = 'hello' + string(tab) + 'world' 
IDL> print, str
hello   world

For more information about IDL's string functions, please see http://idlastro.gsfc.nasa.gov/idl_html_help/Strings.html.

Locating text within a string

The following routines can be used to locate text within a string variable:

STRPOS
IDL routine to test for the existence of a substring within a string
STRMID
IDL routine that will return a substring from a string
STRWHERE
GAMAP routine that returns the locations of a single character within a string
RSEARCH
GAMAP routine to look for text in a string starting from the end of the string
STRRIGHT
GAMAP routine that returns the last N characters from a string

STRPOS is an easy way to test if a given substring is located within larger string: 

IDL> print, strpos( 'She sells seashells by the seashore', 'sea' )
          10

Note that even though the substring "sea" occurs twice in the above string, STRPOS will only return the location of the first occurrence.

STRMID can be used to extract any sized substring from a larger string. You need to specify the starting location and number of characters to be extracted. For example: 

IDL> str = 'The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog'
IDL> print, strmid( str, 4, 5 )
quick
IDL> print, strmid( str, 0, 3 )
The
IDL> print, strmid( str, 10, 5 )
brown

TIP: Always remember that the first character has index 0!

STRWHERE returns the location of a single character in a larger string. 

IDL> print, strwhere( 'anthony aardvark asked about auditory access', 'a' )
    0    8    9   13   17   23   29   38

If you want to search for text starting from the end of the string, you can use the RSEARCH function. This can be useful in removing or replacing from a file name. For example: 

; Replace the *.pro extension with *.txt
IDL> str = '/home/bmy/IDL/gamap2/gamap_util/gamap.pro'
IDL> ind = rsearch ( str, '.' )
IDL> str2 = strmid( str, 0, ind ) + '.txt
IDL> print, str2
/home/bmy/IDL/gamap2/gamap_util/gamap.txt

Finally, STRRIGHT returns the last N characters from a string. 

IDL> print, strright( 'anthony aardvark asked about auditory access', 6 )              
access

Replacing characters in a string

The following routines can be used to replace text within a string variable:

STRPUT
IDL routine to insert text into a string
REPLACE_TOKEN
GAMAP routine that replaces occurrences of tokens with text. Can also be used to expand wildcards with a name list.
STRREPL
GAMAP routine that replaces all occurences of one character in a string with another character.

IDL's STRPUT function is one way to insert characters into a string of text: 

IDL> str1 = 'Now is the winter of our discontent'
IDL> strput, str1, 'summer', 11
IDL> print, str1
Now is the summer of our discontent

However, this requires that you provide the location in the string where the text replacement will take place. In the above example, we insert the text at character 11 (the 1st character in a string is always character 0).

The above task is much more easily accomplished with GAMAP's REPLACE_TOKEN function: 

IDL> str1 = 'Now is the winter of our discontent'
IDL> str2 = replace_token( str1, 'winter', 'summer', delim= )
IDL> print, str2
Now is the summer of our discontent

With REPLACE_TOKEN you do not need to know the position in the string where the replacement text will be inserted. Also, if the replacement text occurs more than once in the string, REPLACE_TOKEN will do the text replacement for the whole string in one fell swoop. For example: 

IDL> print, replace_token( 'She sells seashells by the seashore', 'sea', 'ocean', delim= )
She sells oceanshells by the oceanshore

STRREPL that allows you to replace multiple instances of a single character in a string. For example: 

IDL> print, strrepl( 'Mississippi', 'i', 'a' )
Massassappa

But if you need to replace an entire word rather than just single characters it's better to use REPLACE_TOKEN.

Splitting strings into substrings

You can split a string into individual substrings with GAMAP's STRBREAK function. 

; Use STRBREAK to split the line by spaces
IDL> result = strbreak( 'The sunshine of our li..ii..ii..ii..ife', ' ' )
IDL> for j = 0, n_elements( result )-1 do print, fix(j), ':', result[j]
       0:The
       1:sunshine
       2:of
       3:our
       4:li..ii..ii..ii..ife

; Use STRBREAK to split the line by commas
IDL> result = strbreak( 'Parsley,Sage,Rosemary,and Thyme', ',' )
IDL> for j = 0, n_elements( result )-1 do print, fix(j), ':', result[j]
       0:Parsley
       1:Sage
       2:Rosemary
       3:and Thyme

STRBREAK will return an array of values. The first element is the first word, the second element is the second word, etc.

We recommend that you use GAMAP's STRBREAK rather than IDL's STRSPLIT or STR_SEP routines. STR_SEP was the standard routine to separate strings until IDL 5.2. In IDL 5.3 and higher, STR_SEP was obsoleted and replaced with the new STRSPLIT routine.

  • If you are using IDL 5.2 or lower, then STRBREAK will call STR_SEP to break the string.
  • If you are using IDL 5.3 or higher, then STRBREAK will call STRSPLIT to break the string.

Therefore, STRBREAK will work properly regardless of which version of IDL you are using.

GAMAP's string inquiry functions

GAMAP ships with the following string inquiry functions:

ISALGEBRAIC
Locates the position of algebraic characters in a string (e.g. locations that are EITHER digits '.' OR +/- signs).
ISALNUM
Locates the position of alphanumeric characters ( A...Z, a...z, 0..9 ) in a string.
ISALPHA
Locates the positions of alphabetic characters ( A...Z, a...z ) in a string.
ISDIGIT
Locates the positions of numeric characters ( '0' ... '9') in a string.
ISGRAPH
Locates the positions of graphics characters (i.e. printable characters excluding SPACE) in a string.
ISLOWER
Locates the positions of lowercase alphabetic characters in a string.
ISPRINT
Locates the positions of all printable characters (including SPACE) in a string.
ISSPACE
Locates the positions of all white space characters in a string.
ISUPPER
Locates the positions of all uppercase alphabetic characters in a string.

Each of the above routines return a vector of 0's and 1's corresponding to each character in the string that satisfies the given criteria.

Some examples: 

IDL> str = '#99# Bottles of *Beer* on the Wall!'  

IDL> print, isalgebraic( str ), format='(35i1)'
01100000000000000000000000000000000

IDL> print, isalnum( str ), format='(35i1)'
01100111111101100111100110111011110

IDL> print, isalpha( str ), format='(35i1)'
00000111111101100111100110111011110

IDL> print, isdigit( str ), format='(35i1)'
01100000000000000000000000000000000

IDL> print, isgraph( str ), format='(35i1)'
11110111111101101111110110111011111

IDL> print, islower( str ), format='(35i1)'
00000011111101100011100110111001110

IDL> print, isprint( str ), format='(35i1)'
11111111111111111111111111111111111

IDL> print, isspace( str ), format='(35i1)'
00001000000010010000001001000100000

IDL> print, isupper( str ), format='(35i1)'
00000100000000000100000000000010000

GAMAP's string formatting functions

GAMAP ships with the following string formatting functions:

STRSCI
Converts a number to a string in scientific notation format ( e.g. A x 10^B )
STRCHEM
Superscripts or subscripts numbers and special characters ('x', 'y') found in strings containing names of chemical species.

STRSCI can be used to put a string into scientific notation, for plotting purposes: 

IDL> str = STRSCI( 2000000, format='(i1)' )
IDL> print, str
2 x 10!u6!n

STRCHEM can be used to create strings with superscripts and subscripts (e.g. H2O, 222Rn) for plotting purposes: 

IDL> print, strchem( 'NOx', /sub )            
NO!lx!n

IDL> print, strchem( '222Rn', /sup )
!u2!n!u2!n!u2!nRn

Functions for working with file and path names

The following string-handling functions are specially geared towards working with file and path names:

EXPAND_PATH
IDL routine to expand wild cards in a file name or path name
EXTRACT_FILENAME
GAMAP routine to extract a file name from a fully qualified file path
EXTRACT_PATH
GAMAP routine to extract the directory from a fully qualified file path

Sometimes it is necessary to fully expand the wild cards in a filename. (For example, the IDL routine HDF_BROWSER will choke if it finds the Unix wild card character ~ in the file path, so you have to expand to the full file path.) 

IDL> print, expand_path( '~bmy/IDL/gamap2/gamap_util/gamap.pro' )
/home/bmy/IDL/gamap2/gamap_util/gamap.pro

With EXTRACT_FILENAME, you can extract just the filename part from a full file path: 

IDL> print, extract_filename( '/home/bmy/IDL/gamap2/gamap_util/gamap.pro' )
gamap.pro

and with EXTRACT_PATH, you can extract just the directory part from a full file path: 

IDL> print, extract_path( '/home/bmy/IDL/gamap2/gamap_util/gamap.pro' )
/home/bmy/IDL/gamap2/gamap_util/

--Bmy 10:39, 16 April 2008 (EDT)

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