High ASCII character translation code thingy

[paul foraker]

Hi,

I'm doing some volunteer work for a non-profit. They're sending me an XML
export from a Netsuite database server, emailed to me weekly. The file
contains a transaction log which I need to parse in order to update a
Rev-based database. For ease, and because the file is not huge, I'm opening
it in Excel, copying the records and pasting them into BBEdit, then saving
that as ".txt" and reading the text file into Rev. This handily converts the
data to Tab and Return delimited.

I'm using Macs (Tiger and Leopard, the same behavior). Rev Studio 2.9.

Problem 1:

Some records in this update file contain Spanish, French, German or Dutch
names, street addresses, etc. The special characters in those languages are
arriving here in some code that I cannot find a description of anywhere.
Hopefully, I can represent it here without them getting translated into
something else.

Example:

The accented i in Maria (María) is expressed in this file as   √≠    or the
square root symbol and a not-equal sign. So, the result is María.

Question 1: what is this code called, and where can I find some
documentation on it?  Does Rev have a translator, either through a function,
or some way to import a file?


Problem 2:

A friend painstakingly went through instances of these encodings and mapped
them to the special characters they represent. So, I now have a text file
containing a tab and return delimited list, 65 rows. I thought I would
create an array and pass the data through a function to translate the codes
into their respective special characters. However, it turns out that one of
the special characters is a capital D with a horizontal bar through the
ascender. Or, as it is represented in this table:

√è (tab) Ð

That D character displays fine in BBEdit. However, when I pasted the entire
list into a Rev field, the data was terminated before displaying that D
character. I also tried setting a property to the contents of the Clipboard.
Apparently, that D character is a terminator in the Rev Clipboard.

Question 2: how can I interpret and display the D character, since it
terminates a string?


Weird Note:

I tried using File / Import to bring the translation text file into Rev, but
that result was surprising. All the characters in the table were translated
into the very code I'm trying to unravel! So, for example, the line
containing the accented i:

√≠    í

became

√≠    í

Obviously, Rev knows something about these codes.


So, as a workaround, I'm going to replace the D character with a substitute
and work with the other 64 of them in that array, hoping nobody shows up
with that D character in their name or address.

Anyone have any insight?

Thanks,

-- Paul