Remove Column of Text

Great for Sports Agate

The following function is something I regularly use for removing a column of text in sports agate cleanup scripts. It is very generic. Pass it a string, a zero based column index, and the delimiter (usually a tab specified as '\t' ) and the function will remove that column.

Note, you would need to call this with something that can process all the paragraphs. As this will only handle one paragraph at a time unless you get real fancy with the calls.

Look for another function to call this one in an upcoming post.

//

function removeColumn ( orig, col, delimiter ) {

//-------------------------------------------------------------------------

//-- R E M O V E C O L U M N

//-------------------------------------------------------------------------

//-- Generic: Yes. Should work for any ECMAScript based languages such as

//-- ExtendScript and JavaScript.

//-------------------------------------------------------------------------

//-- Purpose: To remove a 'delimiter' separated 'col'umn of text from the

//-- 'orig'inal passed string.

//-------------------------------------------------------------------------

//-- Arguments: 3

//-- orig: A string which delimited columns

//-- col: A column number. This can be negative to work from the back

//-- delimiter: a string which is used to delimit columns

//-------------------------------------------------------------------------

//-- Calls: Nothing, but requires the .split(), .splice(), and .join()

//-------------------------------------------------------------------------

//-- Returns: The original string with the specified column removed.

//-------------------------------------------------------------------------

//-- Sample Use:

//~ removeColumn ( "a\tb\tc\td\t\e\tf", -1, '\t' ) ; // "a\tb\tc\td\t\e"

//~ removeColumn ( "a\tb\tc\td\t\e\tf", 2, '\t' ) ; // "a\tb\td\t\e\tf"

//-------------------------------------------------------------------------

//-- Notes: Works great with negative column indexes. -1 is the last column

//-- If removing the last column be careful if you need the text to

//-- retain the final return or line break as this will delete it.

//-------------------------------------------------------------------------

//-- Edited: 2009.11.01 by Jon S. Winters of electronic publishing support

//-- Originally an internal function of a larger function.

//-- eps@electronicpublishingsupport.com

//-------------------------------------------------------------------------

//-- break the string into an array using the passed delimiter

var sa = orig.split(delimiter) ;

//-- Call inbuilt splice method to remove the specified element of the array

sa.splice(col,1) ;

//-- Join the array into a string using the passed delimater.

return sa.join(delimiter) ;

} //-- end of internal function.

//