I did some test and indeed Sergey's solution is in certain conditions two times as fast. (
Re: Find position 1st Occurance of nonnumeric value in a str Thread #
1280661 Message #
1280668) But the performance issue is perhaps not really an issue. My test used a string starting with 10,000 (!) numbers and calculated it a 1000 times. The ISALPHA routine did it all in .8 seconds. Sergey's in .4 seconds.
However, consider a very long string with very many numbers, but nevertheless an alpha character somewhere at the beginning, then the ISALPHA routine definitely wins!
>
>Thanks. I thought of that myself, but this is for a data migration and it could be called hundreds of thousands of times for long strings. I was trying to optimize it somehow. I agree your idea is the safest approach and probably the most accurate.
>
>
>>>lcmyString = "123456789 Boldorn"
>>>
>>>I want to return position 11 because it is the first non numeric position (B). just can't think of it today...
>>
>>Why not write a tiny routine? This one uses ISALPHA().
>>
>>
? FirstPosAlpha( "123456789 Boldorn" )
>>
>>FUNCTION FirstPosAlpha
>>lparameter tcString
>>local ln
>>for ln = 1 to len( m.tcString )
>> if isalpha( substr( m.tcString, m.ln ) )
>> RETURN m.ln
>> endif
>>next
>>RETURN 0
Groet,
Peter de Valença
Constructive frustration is the breeding ground of genius.
If there’s no willingness to moderate for the sake of good debate, then I have no willingness to debate at all.
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