Replacing Apostrophe

[bazzer747 18]

Hi,

I'm reading in a large file which I'm scraping from a website into a text file and am having a problem with surnames like O'Donnell and O'Brian. The input text for names like these show in the text like 'O'Donnell' - characters O' for the apostrophe. These surnames need to match an existing table of usernames but won't unless I replace O' with an apostrophe.

 

I'm trying this code to do this:

if AnsiContainsText( cLast, ''' )   // cLast holds surname  'O'Donnell'

  then AnsiReplaceStr( cLast, ''', '' ); 

 

So replacing ' with and apostrophe. This isn't working. When I debug the first line recognises the characters ' but the second line replaces nothing.

 

Any thoughts on why this isn't working (or a better way to do this would be appreciated.

 

[KenR 29]

Try Chr(39)

[Lars Fosdal 1732]

AnsiReplaceStr( cLast, ''', '' );  

Is that an empty string or is it the forum software that plays tricks on us?
It should look like

AnsiReplaceStr( cLast, ''', '''' );  

 

[Lajos Juhász 239]

Also everyone failed to notice a small detail:
 

function AnsiReplaceStr(const AText, AFromText, AToText: string): string;

It's a function not a procedure. You can try:

cLast:=AnsiReplaceStr( cLast, ''', '''' );

 

 

[Fr0sT.Brutal 897]

Also note that "'" is bad style (magic number), more correct is "'", sometime web masters could change to the latter one

[bazzer747 18]

Thank you all. yes, missed that it was a function so this code:

 

        if AnsiContainsText( cLast, ''' )   then
            cLast:= AnsiReplaceStr( cLast, ''', chr(39) );

 

Now works as expected and returns O'Donovan which is what matches the name in the existing table. (and of course, will manage other similar names).

Lars - that was just an empty string there, I just wanted to remove the characters at that stage.

[Uwe Raabe 1890]

There also is a built-in function to decode HTML text:

uses
  System.NetEncoding;
...
  var S := TNetEncoding.HTML.Decode(sHtml);

 

Edited October 10, 2022 by Uwe Raabe

[Remy Lebeau 1260]

11 hours ago, Uwe Raabe said:

There also is a built-in function to decode HTML text:

uses
  System.NetEncoding;
...
  var S := TNetEncoding.HTML.Decode(sHtml);

 

However, it only supports decoding numeric entities, and references to reserved characters. Since apos is not a reserved character, it will not decode '''  The documentation even says so:

 

https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/Libraries/en/System.NetEncoding.THTMLEncoding

Quote

THTMLEncoding only encodes reserved HTML characters: "&<>. THTMLEncoding supports decoding any HTML numeric character reference, such as © or þ, as well as the character entity references of reserved HTML characters: ", &, <, >.

 

Warning: Decoding character entity references of non-reserved characters, such as ' or ©, is not supported. The input data must not contain any other character entity references. Otherwise, the output data may be corrupted.

 

Edited October 10, 2022 by Remy Lebeau

[Lars Fosdal 1732]

21 hours ago, Fr0sT.Brutal said:

Also note that "'" is bad style (magic number), more correct is "'", sometime web masters could change to the latter one

Nope.  https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2083754/why-shouldnt-apos-be-used-to-escape-single-quotes

[Fr0sT.Brutal 897]

2 minutes ago, Lars Fosdal said:

Nope

Nope on your nope 😉 That was more or less actual when the question was asked (12 yr ago) but now, according to your estimations, it's 3x legacy. IE8 in 22 is hardly a something to consider

[Lars Fosdal 1732]

27 minutes ago, Fr0sT.Brutal said:

Nope on your nope 😉 That was more or less actual when the question was asked (12 yr ago) but now, according to your estimations, it's 3x legacy. IE8 in 22 is hardly a something to consider

So, TNetEncoding.HTML.Decode needs to be updated to support HTML5...

Edit: Looks like a significant expansion of named entities.

HTML5: https://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-html5-20110525/named-character-references.html
HTML4: https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/sgml/entities.html