excluding certain end characters from a word

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
#1

I am looking for a way to assign a variable to a “word” that has already been found and selected in InDesign CS2. The only characters of the word “myDateRange” I want assigned to that variable are the characters: ^9 or “/”

The problem is, sometimes “myDateRange” ends with a period or a comma, or any other random punctuation mark that I don’t want to be part of the word.

For example, I only want the variable to be the numbers or slashes: “9/9/99”

I will be looking into brushing up my knowledge of using text delimeters but I am not very good at this. I haven’t touched scripting in awhile, so I thought somebody may be able to help in the meantime?

-thanks if anybody is willing?

-Jeff

#2

Hi Jeff,

More than likely there is an easier way to do this
but if I understand you correctly this should work.

This script grabs the last char of the myDateRange
and compares it to the numbers string list. If it
finds a number myDateRange stays the same. If
if does not, it removes the last char from
myDateRange.


set filterList to {"1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "0"}

set myDateRange to "9/9/99."

set dateOnly to false
repeat with i from 1 to count the filterList
	set thisItem to item i of filterList
	set lastChar to text -1 of myDateRange
	if thisItem = lastChar then
		set dateOnly to true
		exit repeat
	end if
end repeat

if dateOnly is false then
	set myDateRange to text 1 thru -2 of myDateRange
end if

Hope this helps!

Craig

#3

I’m not sure if I’m reading that right, but if I am, here’s an alternative:

set myDateRange to "9/9/99."

try
	last character of myDateRange as integer
on error
	set myDateRange to text 1 thru -2 of myDateRange
end try