Article Difficulty Rating 5 Finding and Replacing Text . . Metacard offers flexible and effective features to search and replace text. There are various methods to go about this, from relatively straightforward commands like find and replace, to more advanced functions like matchText() and replaceText(). This article focuses on the more straightforward searching features. For more information about advanced features see the article on text management. The Find Command One way to search for a text string is to use the find command. It is what the MetaCard Find tool uses, and has a number of advantages. Firstly, it can be used to search multiple fields in the defaultStack, as well as specific fields. find "Joe" -- searches all the fields in the stack card by card find "Joe" in field "Name" -- searches the "Name" field in all the cards Secondly, you can control characteristics of the search by specifying the <type>, in the form: find <type> <expression> <Type> can be chars, string, whole, or word. Using chars finds exact character matches anywhere in words, but does not match text expressions longer than a single word. String finds exact character matches anywhere in words, and includes spaces and multiple words. Whole only matches the entire expression if it is complete words, and word matches whole words but only matches the first word in the expression. The following table gives examples of find commands and the text which is matched using different search characteristics.The first line in the table is equivalent to typing: find chars "man" Examples of the Find Command, operating in a field containing the words "The yellow man". Type Search the result the foundText chars man empty man string man empty man whole man empty man word man empty man chars e yellow empty e string e yellow empty e yellow whole e yellow not found word e yellow not found chars yellow man empty yellow string yellow man empty yellow man whole yellow man empty yellow man word yellow man empty yellow chars man yellow empty man string man yellow not found whole man yellow not found word man yellow empty man There are a number of functions which give information about the text which has been found with the find command. The foundChunk returns a chunk expression describing where the text was found, e.g. char 2 to 3 of field 1. The foundText (used in the field above) contains the actual text found. The foundLine returns the number of the line the text was on. The foundField returns the field name. The foundLoc returns the coordinates of the border drawn around the text that was found. If you do not want certain fields such as labels to be included in a general search, set their dontSearch property to true. If you want to discriminate capital letters and lowercase letters set the caseSensitive local property to true. This property also applies to other methods of searching besides the find command, such as the offset functions. TIP: If you want to use the find command, but you want the text which is found to be selected as a normal text selection, rather than the standard black border, use the following script: lock screen -- avoids any screen flicker find <expression> select the foundChunk unlock screen The Offset Function Despite the flexibility of the find command, it is not always the best feature for searching. The offset function is a simple alterative to find. It is generally faster than the find command, and has the advantage that it can be used in other containers besides fields, such as variables. It also does not display any results, leaving you free to generate user feedback to the search in any way you like. Offset returns the character number of a specified string within a whole string. put offset("there", "hello there") -- returns 7 since the t in "there" is character 7 in "hello there" If the specified string is not within the whole string 0 is returned. To use the offset function like the find command, try something similar to the following script: ask "Enter the text to find?" if the result is not "Cancel" then \ select char offset(it, field 1) \ to offset(it, field 1) + length(it) - 1 of field 1   -- select from the first character to the last character to be found -- the length function returns the number of characters in a string -- the \ character is simply used to separate long lines The offset functions returns character offsets, but there are a set of other similar functions that work in relation to different chunks: itemOffset, wordOffset, lineOffset. A useful property to remember when using these is the wholeMatches property. When set to true it forces all matches made to be complete chunks, i.e. complete items, words, or lines. When false, it allows partial matches. Useful Operators There are various operators which can be useful during text searches. The contains, is in and is among operators can be used to make text comparisons. Of these, only is among merits further explanition. It will only return true when a complete match is made. if field 1 contains "hello" then beep if "ello" is in "hello" then beep if "hello" is among the items of fld 1 then beep if "This complete line." is among the lines of fld "example" then beep The Replace Command The replace command can be used to replace text strings in containers. It replaces all instances of a text string in the specified container. For more complex replacements, see the article on text management. The syntax is as follows: replace <text> with <replacement text> in <container> For example: replace "his" with "her" in field 1 replace "this" with "that" in MyVariable Did you find this article useful? Have any ideas for future topics? Email Us!