More string problems

jroxit · November 21st, 2008, 04:05 PM

Ok, here goes. I'm have a string variable that's being returned to me as for money that's being returned as: USD1.30 (for 1 dollar thirty cents.) I need to strip off the first three characters (the USD part.) What's the easiest/best/cleanest way to do that? I tried Left and that didnt work. Also was thinking about doing a Right command on the string, but I'm not sure how many digits the money amount will be.

Any ideas??

Thanks!

dparsons · November 21st, 2008, 04:21 PM

Something like this would work:

Dim someVariable, someVariable2

someVariable = "USD1.30"
someVariable2 = Right(someVariable, (Len(someVariable) - 3))
Response.Write(someVariable2)

The use of Right() in the assignment of someVariable2 says, starting from the Right most position of someVariable move X positions to the left where X is the length of someVariable less 3.

Response.Write will display 1.30 to the screen.

hth.
-Doug

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Old Pedant · November 21st, 2008, 05:19 PM

A bit easier than what DParsons suggested is simply:

Code:

    ugly = "USD1.30"
    pretty = Mid( ugly, 4 )

No reason to use RIGHT, which requires getting the length and then subtracting 3.
Just *start* at the character after the "USD" and presto.

*** HOWEVER ***

Is this REALLY a good idea????

What happens if at some point your "feed" changes and starts giving you
    USD 3.38
or
    $3.38
or
    3.38 USD
or
    3.38 US$
????

I think a much better way is to use a regular expression to strip out all of the characters that are not part of the actual numerical value. Thus:

Code:

<%
...
Set reZap = New RegExp
reZap.Pattern = "[^\d\.\-]"
reZap.Global = True

ugly = "USD78.31"
pretty = CDbl( reZap.Replace( ugly, "" ) ) ' and SHOULD convert to a number when you do this!
...
%>

You can use CCur( ) in place of CDbl( ), if you wish. But in any case, stop carrying the number around as a string. (EXCEPTION: If you will then *ONLY* Response.Write the value, you can leave it as a string. But if you do *ANY* calculation with it--or if you store it in a DB--be sure to convert it to a number.)

mat41 · November 23rd, 2008, 07:24 PM

Once again assistance well above anybodys expectations.....

Wind is your friend
Matt
www.elitemarquees.com.au