How about the option to use regular expressions to define the bounds of dates, amounts or strings in DT? I am finding that the standard “scan text” options for dates or amounts and less so for strings are pretty limiting. I for one would find it useful to be able define a range of text using a regular expression or pair of regular expressions to define the text range for searching for the item in question. For example scan text date using a regular expression as prefix then a “*” to denote the date found and followed by another regular expression to define the closing bounds of the search. I know that this can be done strictly using the “scan text regular expression” action but that approach requires additional steps to make use of the found value. The advantage of the approach I described is that it then can use some of the built-in formatting options for the results of the scan text operation.
How about the option to use regular expressions to define the bounds of dates, amounts or strings in DT?
There already is the option to use regular expressions with a Scan Text smart action.
And again, as noted in your other post, provide a concrete example.
Wow. Again another rapid response. The example I gave in my other post’s reply to you is the example. To summarize:
- find a date or amount or string in the text of a document using a regular expression in the cases where the Scan Text Date or Scan Text Amount or Scan Text String can not find the value desired.
- If the value is found then perform the same transformations on the found value as are available with the current “Scan Text” actions.
In my example that I replied in my other post, I wrote a script to implement finding a date and transforming that date into another form. If this were implemented in the DT product as described above the need for writing a script would be obviated.
Again I thank you for your timely response. My concern may be an edge case and I do like writing scripts, but this may be of value to the community. Thank You
You’re welcome.
You’re not making that easy by referring to another post without providing a link.
Anyway, a regular expression like (\d{4})-(\d\d)-(\d\d) allows you to use yyyy, mm, and dd in your smart rule action as \1, \2, and \3.
What prevents you from doing that? Or what is it that you really want to achieve?
I really don’t understand what you’re after, what you’ve tried, and what did (not) work.
Sorry my reply was to BlueFrog on another thread with him. I apologize for not posting a link but frankly I am not all that knowledgeable about posting on the forum.
I am trying to put forward a feature request to allow using regular expressions as the bounds for finding dates or amounts and to a lesser extent strings. The “scan text” actions have qualifiers for defining the bounds for finding these values but they do not offer as much flexibility as regular expressions in finding those values. I know that there is a regular expression search feature and I use it frequently. In a nutshell I was asking for the ability to use the built-in placeholder transformations for the results of regular expressions. I guess that is what I really want to achive.
Sorry my explanations are insufficient. As I said in reply to Bluefrog, I know how to and have written scripts to get my results. I just thought maybe it might be a useful feature for the product. I am not frantic about this. Thanks for your responses, both.