acba-tools
Similar Strings
acba-tools
Similar Strings
The form has two primary parameters
The form itself gives brief description of the wild cards that can be employed. Here is a more detailed table of the potential patterns and their meanings.
| Symbol | Meaning | Impact on Pattern Search |
|---|---|---|
| SWA | Any group of printing characters. | Searches for records that match the group exactly. Patterns are both case and order specific. To search for patterns occuring somewhere within the string you must use the 'wild cards' |
| * | A group of any printing characters of any length (including zero length) | Searching for *SWA* finds those strings that have the pattern 'SWA' anywhere. |
| ? | Any single printing character. | You can use multiples of ? to specify where to look for your pattern. ???SWA* looks for SWA starting at the fourth character in a string. |
| # | Any single number character (i.e. from 0 - 9) | Specifies that there must a number at the position indicated within the pattern. |
| [Aa] | Permits specified alternative values at the pattern position. | *[Aa]llen* marks either Allen or allen anywhere within the string. |
| [!Aa] | Disallows the specified characters at the position in the pattern. | *[!Aa]llen* marks any string 'llen' provided it does not have 'A' or 'a' at the beginning of it. |
| [num] | A special character meaning find a number irrespective of length at the specified position. | The following string pattern *Inv####/[num][Cc]redit* would find all invoices starting with a 4 digit year but with a number pattern of any length immediately followed by the words "Credit" or "credit". |
In each case the analysis marks those records in the column or field that match your specified pattern. The audit trail heading will read Col 'X' like [some pattern].
The 'Check Valid Data' button will verify that no such values exist in your datalist.