Split, combine ok but where's extract?

[Alex Tweedly]

MisterX wrote:

>Mark,
>
>I did say I already wrote a function to extract these
>but is there no split combination that does this without
>a slow loop?
>
>Here's the two functions I used
>
> function MergeColumns
>end MergeColumns
>
I'm still trying to understand just what that one does (in all cases) so 
I'll start with the simpler one.

>function ExtractItems tabl,column,adelimiter
>  if adelimiter is not empty then
>    set the itemdelimiter to adelimiter
>  end if
>  
>  local a
>  put "" into a
>  local x=1
>  repeat for each line L in tabl
>    put (item column of l) into line x of a
>    add 1 to x
>  end repeat
>  return a
>end ExtractItems
>  
>
x is used only to count the number of lines,and changed only when a new 
line is added the end - so just use "put after"

function ExtractItems tabl,column,adelimiter
  local a

  if adelimiter is not empty then
    set the itemdelimiter to adelimiter
  end if
  
  repeat for each line L in tabl
    put (item column of L) & cr after a
  end repeat
  delete the last char of a 
  return a
end ExtractItems


>Of which the MergeColumn could use lots of optimizing ;)
>But they're slow functions compared to split or combine.
>  
>
I can't see a way to use split/combine (except for the special case of 
first col).

-- 
Alex Tweedly       http://www.tweedly.net



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