Handling Arbitrary Keywords

[Jason Piercey]

How are you handling generating keywords from an
arbitrary comma delimited string to use with (initget)
and (getkword) ? Do you suppose it is 'good enough'
to just capitalize the first character, forcing the user to type out additional characters if any duplicate are used?

Thinking about writing such a function just not sure if it is worth the time, as I can't see a clear solution in my head at the moment. On the other hand I'd rather not have to deal with duplicates, sort of defeats the purpose of a keyword, eh? < thinking out loud >

 

[Paul Turvill]

The usual method is to capitalize a different character (not necessarily the first one) for each selection; if the words are *very* similar, you can capitalize two or more characters, to require that number of characters from the user.
___

 

[Jason Piercey]

That is what I would do if I were creating the keywords manually. In this case the keywords are taken from an alternate source (stored data from the user) which means I have to find a way to parse the strings and determine which characters are unique to each string then 'reformat' them so they work properly.

I started to work on this a last night, but got a little side tracked. It'll be back to the drawing board again this evening.

Thanks for the response.

 

[Ken Alexander]

Jason,

This might be cutting corners, but could you strcat "1-" "string1" and "2-" "string2" or something like that.

 

[Paul Turvill]

If they're not excessively long keywords, I suppose you could simply process them to ALL CAPS with (strcase), and force the user to type the entire keyword ...
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[BillZ]

This may be the ramblings of a madman but try it and see if it gives you any ideas. You'll have to figure out a way to capitalize the letters in the word that you want.

Bill

(defun List_Keywords

(setq lt (list "arbor" "annual" "cat" "dog" "animal" "dug" "well" "aqua" "worm" "canoe" "wiggle" "dumb" "cut" "awful" "diggy" "what" "cot") ltt (acad_strlsort lt)
)

(setq cnt 0 ;outside most loop first. ) (while (> (length ltt) 0) ;get lists of same starting letters. (setq ent (nth 0 ltt) l1 nil l1 (cons ent l1) ltt (cdr ltt) ) ;end setq (while (and (car ltt) (= (substr ent 1 1)(substr (car ltt) 1 1)) ) (setq l1 (cons (car ltt) l1) ;point list of each pline. ltt (cdr ltt) ) ) ;end second while (setq l1 (reverse l1) plnt (cons (set (read (strcat (strcase (substr ent 1 1)) "_list")) l1) plnt) ;list of lists. slst (cons (strcat (strcase (substr ent 1 1)) "_list") slst) ;list of names list. cnt (1+ cnt) ) ) ;end while (setq plnt (reverse plnt) slst (reverse slst) )
) ;end defun

 

[Jason Piercey]

Thanks for the idea, Ken. However, I don't think that
will suite this particular situation very well.

 

[Jason Piercey]

They could be long,short, or anywhere in between.
I'll see what type of things I can cook up after while.

 

[Jason Piercey]

Bill,

I'll have a look at this a bit later (too much work right now).
Thanks for your ideas.

 

[BillZ]

If I get a chance I'll look at this some more also.

Bill

 

[Devin]

Jason,

I've devloped a real nice routine. It basically takes the text supplied to my own ggetxxx functions and searches them for keywords. I no longer have to do any initget function calls as it's all done automatically. I format like this (ggetxxx 'var "User prompt select pt or [Kword1/Kword2]"). It automatically searches the prompt for the keyword and applies the initget with the extracted kewords. It also performs another function. It checks 'var for a value and suggests it as a default if found not null, ie: "User prompt select pt or [Kword1/Kword2]<(default from 'var)>: "

It saves me alot of trouble and time.

Maybe or maybe not helpful?

Devin

 

[Jason Piercey]

Devin,

This situation is a bit different than what you described.

Take something like this as an example.

; get a list of arbitrary strings (just an example)
; modify case as required

(vl-registry-descendents
(strcat
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\"
(vlax-product-key)
)
)

With that return value, parse the strings and find the
unique characters within each string that will be
capitalized to work as a shortcut for a keyword.

I wrote a strcaseNth function, that was the easy part Finding the nth(s) is the hard part (so far anyway). I'm thinking vl-string-mismatch is a good start. Back to the drawing board.

Hope that helps explain the situation a little better.

 

[Jason Piercey]

Think I have something that works, I'll post
when I get it all "polished up". Probably
tomorrow.

 

[Jason Piercey]

Alrighty, here we are. Give this a whirl and see how
it works for ya. I tested it for a while seemed to have reasonable return values to me.

(getKeywords
'("webservices" "settings" "profiles"
"mtext" "minidump" "ism" "fixedprofile"
"filenavextensions" "express" "dragdropformats"
"dbview" "autodeskapps" "applications"))

returns:
("Webservices" "Settings" "Profiles"
"Mtext" "mInidump" "ISM" "Fixedprofile"
"fiLenavextensions" "Express" "Dragdropformats"
"dBview" "Autodeskapps" "appliCations")

; Jason Piercey . February 6th, 2004
; function to format a list of strings to
; be used as keywords for iniget/getkword
; Arguments:
; [strings] - list of strings
; return: list of strings
; Example:
; (getKeywords '("abc" "abc" "abc")) -> ("Abc" "aBc" "abC") ; (getKeywords '("jb" "jf" "jhjghj"))-> ("Jb" "jF" "jHjghj") (defun getKeywords (strings / i l next keys lst) (setq strings (mapcar (function (lambda (x) (strcase x t))) strings)) (foreach item strings (setq i 1)
(setq l (strlen item))

(while (<= i l)
(setq next (substr item i 1))

(cond
((not (vl-position next keys))
(setq keys (cons next keys))
(setq lst (cons (strcaseNth item (1- i) nil) lst))
(setq i (1+ l)) )

((= i l)
(setq keys (cons item keys))
(setq lst (cons (strcase item) lst))
(setq i (1+ i)) )

((vl-position next keys) (setq i (1+ i)))
)

)
)
(reverse lst)
)

; Jason Piercey . February 6th 2004
; function to strcase the nth element of a string
; Arguments:
; {string] - string, string to modify
; [position] - integer, nth element
; [which] - Re: strcase function, NOT an optional argument ; return: string if successful (defun strcaseNth (string position which) (cond ((zerop position) (strcat (strcase (substr string 1 1) which) (substr string 2 (strlen string))) )

((< position (strlen string))
(strcat
(substr string 1 position)
(strcase (substr string (1+ position) 1) which)
(substr string (+ 2 position) (strlen string))) )

(t nil)
)
)

 

[Ken Alexander]

Pretty slick Jason.

I'm real curious as to a project that would need something like this. I have a few routines that use different keyword lists even one that uses nine different. However, all are definable within the routine.

Just being Nosey I guess.

Alrighty, here we are. Give this a whirl and see how
it works for ya. I tested it for a while seemed to have reasonable return values to me.

(getKeywords
'("webservices" "settings" "profiles"
"mtext" "minidump" "ism" "fixedprofile"
"filenavextensions" "express" "dragdropformats"
"dbview" "autodeskapps" "applications"))

returns:
("Webservices" "Settings" "Profiles"
"Mtext" "mInidump" "ISM" "Fixedprofile"
"fiLenavextensions" "Express" "Dragdropformats"
"dBview" "Autodeskapps" "appliCations")

; Jason Piercey . February 6th, 2004
; function to format a list of strings to
; be used as keywords for iniget/getkword
; Arguments:
; [strings] - list of strings
; return: list of strings
; Example:
; (getKeywords '("abc" "abc" "abc")) -> ("Abc" "aBc" "abC") ; (getKeywords '("jb" "jf" "jhjghj"))-> ("Jb" "jF" "jHjghj") (defun getKeywords (strings / i l next keys lst) (setq strings (mapcar (function (lambda (x) (strcase x t))) strings)) (foreach item strings (setq i 1)
(setq l (strlen item))

(while (<= i l)
(setq next (substr item i 1))

(cond
((not (vl-position next keys))
(setq keys (cons next keys))
(setq lst (cons (strcaseNth item (1- i) nil) lst))
(setq i (1+ l)) )

((= i l)
(setq keys (cons item keys))
(setq lst (cons (strcase item) lst))
(setq i (1+ i)) )

((vl-position next keys) (setq i (1+ i)))
)

)
)
(reverse lst)
)

; Jason Piercey . February 6th 2004
; function to strcase the nth element of a string
; Arguments:
; {string] - string, string to modify
; [position] - integer, nth element
; [which] - Re: strcase function, NOT an optional argument ; return: string if successful (defun strcaseNth (string position which) (cond ((zerop position) (strcat (strcase (substr string 1 1) which) (substr string 2 (strlen string))) )

((< position (strlen string))
(strcat
(substr string 1 position)
(strcase (substr string (1+ position) 1) which)
(substr string (+ 2 position) (strlen string))) )

(t nil)
)
)

Thinking about writing such a function

 

[Jason Piercey]

Hi Ken,

I am writing this routine (isn't that how it always starts <g>) for autolayering standard stuff (notes, dimensions, hatch, etc) allowing the user to create a named group of commands and associate a layer with each named group.

I've got several user prompts that allow adding of groups, adding commands to a group, removing groups, etc..... Well, rather than leave the user typing blind and trap the input, check what what typed against what is defined, I thought it would be nice to display the available choices in a getkword fashion.

Since the groups are created from the user, I have no idea what they are called, so I needed a way to grab the group names from the registry then format them for prompting on the fly.

Does that clear things up?

 

[BillZ]

Thanks Jason,
I'll copy this for trial on a later date.

Bill

 

[Jason Piercey]

You're welcome, Bill.

Hope you find it useful some day.

 

[Ken Alexander]

Jason,

Yup....clears it up. Your functions have given me some ideas on a function I am working on. A 'complete' string sorter. Seem to run into roadblock each direction. I think I'm making it too difficult.
Keep plungin away.

Thanks for sharing the functions.

 

[Jason Piercey]

I seem to have a knack for making things more difficult than what they need to be also, you are not alone
and you are welcome.