Detecting Text String Blank spaces

Stephen · **Posted:** October 9th, 2014, 1:01 pm

Moved this to this new topic from the Word Frequency Counter (http://www.digitalgrapevine.info/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5512&start=30). Am so far not able to both detect text string blank spaces and then remove these from a string.

Have tried to use charCode which appears to return an empty string: no entry in Debug.trace. Doesn't seem to equate with ""

Also tried charCodeAt which does return 32 for a blank space. But not sure how to get/set/replace selection for this return.

Not sure how to use this return (32) in a script to remove more than one consecutive blank space. Retaining single blank spaces is necessary between words in the string, but multiple blank spaces seem to throw off the text selection when the string is used to populate the list box. After a section in the listbox of blank space (where for example there was a gap in the original text), any selection is roughly off by the amount of blank space in between.

Here's a script that was tried but doesn't work to remove the spaces.

Code:

function checkWord(w){

var tmpFound = false;

for (var b=0;b<myWordsArray.length;b++){

   if (String.toupper(myWordsArray[b].word) == String.toupper(w)) {
      myWordsArray[b].count++;
      tmpFound = true
      }
}
for (m = 0;m<commonwordarray.length;m++){
if  (String.toupper(w) == commonwordarray[m]){
tmpFound = true
}
}

for (var g=0;g<myWordsArray.length;g++){
tmpCode = myWordsArray[g].word.charCodeAt(g);
   if (tmpCode == 32) {      
tmpLetter = " ";      
tmpFound = true;
      }
}

if (!tmpFound)myWordsArray[b] = new WORDOBJECT(w);

}
function WORDOBJECT(w){
this.word = w.tolower();
this.count = 1;
}

Any suggestions appreciated.

mackavi · **Posted:** October 9th, 2014, 1:19 pm

Code:

myString = myString.split(" ").join(" ")

Mack

Stephen · **Posted:** October 9th, 2014, 1:55 pm

Hi Mack,

Thank you for suggesting this. Been using it to try out different scripts with some success.

The following works on smaller amounts of text (a few lines) but is quite slow (and I'm testing on a core i-7 high spec computer). Sometimes crashes. Larger text (a few paragraphs) gets hung up, fails (needed task manager to end).

Code:

for (var a=0;a<myWords.length;a++){
myWords = myWords.split("  ").join(" ");
myWords = myWords.split("\n").join(" ");
}
Debug.trace(myWords);

Since the size of the text can vary, small to large, need to figure out how to use this or a variation for larger blocks of text, not have it hang up.

Maybe there is a "cleaner" way to do this without slowing, hanging up, crashes?

Any suggestions appreciated.

mackavi · **Posted:** October 10th, 2014, 7:50 am

stephen wrote:

...but is quite slow...

Dry run it in your head.

Pick a phrase such as "The quick Red Fox"

The first thing you're doing is putting it into a FOR loop the length of the string - so TWENTY times!

EACH time you loop you're asking it to do two things - remove all double spaces and remove all new lines from the string.

Can you see problem?

Mack

Stephen · **Posted:** October 10th, 2014, 1:30 pm

Yes, Mack. Thank you.

Seems that if I simply remove the "for" loop, the replacement works quickly. :oops:

I'll test some more, but looks like problem solved.

Again, thank you.

Digital Workshop

Detecting Text String Blank spaces

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