Setting Itemdelimiter to multiple character string

[Ken Ray]

Sivakatirswami,

I would suggest using regular expressions instead of item delimiters for
this. MC 2.4.3's support for PCRE is awesome. If you need some help on this,
let me know.

Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com
Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sivakatirswami" <katir at hindu.org>
To: "Metacard List" <metacard at lists.runrev.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2002 12:01 AM
Subject: Setting Itemdelimiter to multiple character string


> I am writing a processor to handle input from a raw index dump from Quark
> Express which is "massaged" back into a tagged format for re-upload into
> Quark, getting Metacard do what the index person usually has to do by hand
> over many days/hours of manual work
>
>  Parsing is extremely difficult due to the subtle similar, seeming
> infinitely variable combinations of things like
>
> <tab> See also God, nature
> , see also Parasakti
> : See
>
> Etc. where any instances of a single character of punctuation, or word
> space/count etc. can rarely be used as a dependable delimiter. The logic
of
> which is  quite reasonable to those types of minds that create the Chicago
> Manual of Style and its ilk, but which defy any rational algorithm ...
>
> I saw an earlier question which arose but was never answered but which is
> quite important for a lot of this kind of text processing work. Simply:
>
> Can we safely build processes that poke multiple chars into the
itemdelimter
> to do such things as the following:
>
> ==============
> ## Form 3: Text string ending with ", see " and one or more words/phrases
> ## which are to be italicized...
>
>     if x contains ", see "  then
>       put ", see " into itemDelimiter
>       put "<I>" before item 2 of x
>       put "<$>" after  item 2 of
>     end if
>
> Put another way, barring earthquakes and unknown acts of God in the realm
of
> cybernetics, is it a safe bet that the itemDelimiter will support this
> multiple character string input in the future?
>
> Himalayan Academy Publications
>
> Sivakatirswami
> Editor's Assistant/Production Manager
> katir at hindu.org
> www.HinduismToday.com, www.HimalayanAcademy.com,
> www.Gurudeva.org, www.hindu.org
>
> Read The Master Course Lesson of the Day at
> http://www.gurudeva.org/lesson.shtml
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