But those all look like strings that might show up for other reasons, which makes global search-and-replace not an option. How do yo work around that? Shel Horowitz - "The Transformpreneur"(sm) ________________________________________________ Watch (and please share) my TEDx Talk, "Impossible is a Dare: Business for a Better World" *http://www.ted.com/tedx/events/11809 <http://www.ted.com/tedx/events/11809>** <http://www.ted.com/tedx/events/11809>* (move your mouse to "event videos") Contact me to bake in profitability while addressing hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change Twitter: @shelhorowitz * First business ever to be Green America Gold Certified * Inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame http://goingbeyondsustainability.com http://transformpreneur.com mailto:shel at greenandprofitable.com * 413-586-2388 Award-winning, best-selling author of 10 books. Latest: Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson) _________________________________________________ On Sun, Oct 22, 2017 at 2:39 PM, Elijah Gwynn <eli at egwynn.com> wrote: > Regarding tabs-vs-commas: it's a real tragedy that more programs don't > make use of any of the *four* ASCII delimiter characters ( > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delimiter#ASCII_delimited_text) that have > been available since ASCII-1965. The whole world of character-escaping > problems that we programmers deal with in order to support CSV/TSV could > have been avoided! > > Eli > > On 22 Oct 2017, at 12:22, Rich Roth wrote: > > Since I do a lot of text handling for a number of projects, I'll add a few > more comments: > > 1) *programmed (perl,sed,script or saved regex) vs find & replace.* > I find any repeatable method far better then find/replace for a number of > reasons. > David didn't mention if this is a one time need or repeating, clearly > repeating requires more of a saved method. > Even with a one time need, F/R has a fatal flaw if you pick a bad pattern > or just mis-type, while using a saved technique > you can test your method until it's right. > A few comments about unexpected variations in data re-enforce this idea. > > 2) > *Create Tab delimited vs CSV *He didn't say which spreadsheet, Excel and > most others will accept tab delimited and using tabs does reduce a variety > of bumps that extra commas produce. > 3) *OpenRefine* > Leave it to HT (thanks Steve) to add a tangent idea of use to others. I > am working on a variety of text processing tasks, using OCR and various > scripts and that looks to be a useful tools. > > In one case, I have processed some 15 data sources into a common display > system for Shaker community members over the 200 years of 17 communities > and some 15,000 members. I still am working on a OCR of a 1970 microfilm > data set of 16,000 more entries. You can see some of the results at: > http://memoirs.shakerpedia.com/ > If any Shaker aficionados on HT, any help is welcome on that or > http://shakerpedia.com/ in general. > > 4) If anyone has such conversion/scanning projects for community groups, > esp historical society, please contact me. > We are now doing some work for ours: Historical society of Greenfield. > > Good luck to David - Rich > > On 10/22/2017 6:21 AM, Steven Brewer wrote: > > I see people have made all the obvious suggestions. Let me add that > NeoOffice can do search and replace with regular expressions. > > But folks should also be aware of OpenRefine: It's a tool for taking > messy data sets and cleaning them up. It's perhaps overkill for > something like this, but maybe not: It has a bunch of tools for > identifying classes of problems (like those that crop up with dodgy OCR) > and being able to correct them all at once. It's worth being aware of > anyway. > > Good luck! > > On 10/21/17 7:34 AM, David Greenberg wrote: > > I have a hard copy list of names, addresses and phone numbers. I can > scan to PDF and then copy and paste to a text editor (BBEdit) or other > file. I then need to manipulate the text so that I end up with a csv > file that can be opened by a spreadsheet program. Tools that I have at > my disposal include BBEdit (with Grep), a MAMP stack, NeoOffice (Mac > version of OpenOffice) and FileMaker. > > Input looks like this: > > John Doe > (413) 111-1111 > 123 First St Greenfield 01301 > Jane Smith > 456 So Main Ln Greenfield 01301 > Jane Ann Smith(413) 222-2222 > 78 Main Ct Greenfield 01301 > > Note that all addresses will include 'Greenfield 01301' and, /if /the > data includes a phone number, it will start with '(413)'. > > Output should look like this: > > John,Doe,(413) 111-1111,123 First St,Greenfield,01301 > Jane,Smith,,456 So Main Ln,Greenfield,01301 > Jane Ann,Smith,(413) 222-2222,78 Main Ct,Greenfield,01301 > > Any suggestions greatly appreciated. Thanks. > > David > > > _______________________________________________ > Hidden-discuss mailing list - home page: http://www.hidden-tech.netHidden-discuss@lists.hidden-tech.net > > You are receiving this because you are on the Hidden-Tech Discussion list. > If you would like to change your list preferences, Go to the Members > page on the Hidden Tech Web site.http://www.hidden-tech.net/members > > > -- > Rich Roth > Webmaster/Steering Committee Member > Hidden-tech http://www.hidden-tech.net > The Talent you need is right here, > Join and share your skills > ((Sponsored by Thrives Media))http://www.thrivesmedia.comhttp://www.welovemuseums.com > > _______________________________________________ > Hidden-discuss mailing list - home page: http://www.hidden-tech.net > Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net > > You are receiving this because you are on the Hidden-Tech Discussion list. > If you would like to change your list preferences, Go to the Members > page on the Hidden Tech Web site. > http://www.hidden-tech.net/members > > > _______________________________________________ > Hidden-discuss mailing list - home page: http://www.hidden-tech.net > Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net > > You are receiving this because you are on the Hidden-Tech Discussion list. > If you would like to change your list preferences, Go to the Members > page on the Hidden Tech Web site. > http://www.hidden-tech.net/members > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.hidden-tech.net/pipermail/hidden-discuss/attachments/20171023/57af09cf/attachment-0001.html