Hi, and thanks to everyone for this forum. I am always amazed by the generousity of Mac users.
Here’s what I want to do;
I have text for a surveilance system at work that lists numbers of transmitters used to open up our front gate. I would like to be able to replace those numbers with the corresponding users.
Seems simple enough, but as I said, I don’t have a lot of experience. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks, Matt
Edit- So I should probably show you what I have.
tell application “TextEdit”
set gate_File to (path to desktop as Unicode text) & “Event Log Report.txt”
set fRef to (open for access file gate_File with write permission)
open gate_File
set file_List to (every character of file gate_File as list)
end tell
After this, I’m not sure how to find and replace those numbers.
To parse a plain text file, TextEdit is not necessary. AppleScript has a few skills to access text files directly.
Can you post an example, what kind of strings you want to search and replace?
(*
set T to "07:37:24 05/28/07 Remote Access Programming Mode
07:16:28 05/28/07 Console Exit Programming Mode
07:14:40 05/28/07 Remote Access Programming Mode
06:56:16 05/28/07 Block Transmitter 11047 Open Channel [A]
06:56:12 05/28/07 Block Transmitter 11047 Open Channel [A]
06:56:12 05/28/07 Block Transmitter 11047 Open Channel [A]
06:43:52 05/28/07 Block Card 193 Open Channel [A]"
*)
set f to choose file
set ff to open for access f with write permission
set T to read f
set {TID, text item delimiters} to {text item delimiters, "11047"}
set T to text items of T
set text item delimiters to "John Doe"
set T to T as string
set text item delimiters to TID
write T to ff
close access ff
Thank you Stefan,
While that did work for the 11047, how do I get another name to replace the “193” of the last line? I have to keep track of something like 400 names/numbers, so I am wondering if there is a way to maintain a list and have it read the delimiters from that list. Also, I tried to add a tell command to get TextEdit to open the manipulated file, but kept getting error.
I really appreciate your help,
Matt
For TextEdit the syntax is wrong (TextEdit doesn’t understand open for access)
The repeat loop to process a list can be like this
set searchList to {"11047", "193"}
set replaceList to {"John Doe", "James Smith"}
set f to choose file
set ff to open for access f with write permission
set T to read f
set TID to text item delimiters
repeat with i from 1 to (count searchList)
set text item delimiters to item i of searchList
set T to text items of T
set text item delimiters to item i of replaceList
set T to T as string
end repeat
set text item delimiters to TID
write T to ff starting at 0
close access ff
but you can also read an other text oder Excel file with the values
Note: I forgot starting at 0, otherwise the text will be appended
Of course. It depends on the settings of text item delimiters
For example you have the text
set T to "Hi, AppleScript is great"
setting text item delimiters to “space” and the line
set T to text items of T
you get a list {“Hi,”, “AppleScript”, “is”, “great”}, it splits the text into single text items separated by text item delimiter (space character)
setting text item delimiters to e.g. “foo” and the line
set T to T as string
the result is: “Hi,fooAppleScriptfooisfoogreat”, it concatenates the list into a string with text item delimiter in between (“foo”)
