How to remove the new line formed when parsing a text

[devinpal]

Hello,

I'm new to PAD and Regex, and I tried extracting text from a pdf then parsing it so I can get a text of:

Article X Section Y

I used the regex (?i)article\s?\n?\s\d\d?\s?\n?((?i)section\s?\n?\d\d?)? just in case the full text is separated with a line in the pdf, also in case the X and Y contains more than one digit.

The problem is, it seems that the text extracted is separated with a line, so it looks like this:

Article

X Section Y

I tried replacing the regex \n in the extracted text with %""% to delete the new line but it doesn't seem to work.
Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance.

[Agnius]

It should technically work. Can you share a screenshot of your Replace text action? Are you sure you enabled regular expressions? Did you store the result in the same variable?

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[Srini007]

Hi @devinpal 

Can you share the sample pdf which you are trying to extract using the PAD?

Or the sample text you are able to extract in a notepad also works

If you find this reply helpful, please consider giving it a LIKE AND

If this reply answers your question or solves your issue, please ACCEPT AS SOLUTION

Thanks,

Srini

[Nived_Nambiar]

Hi @devinpal 

Give a try like this ?

Replace action

Thanks & Regards,

Nived N 🚀

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[devinpal]

Thank you very much for the replies.

I'm sorry that I can't provide the pdf, but this is basically what was extracted.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Article
X section Y xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -

and this is the result that appears in the window.

The second and the third works because they're from a single line in the text source, so it's like:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Article X section Y xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -

Though in the list it's shown as a single line with a strange double spacing.

deleting \s deleted the new line apparently:

But I can't seem to fill the results with a space after that, or maybe this is not how replace text works.

I hope this provide enough information, thank you.

[devinpal]

And this is my attempt on using "Replace \n with %""%", it's not working.

Though it's strange that in the list, a single space is shown instead of the double space shown from previous follow-up. Seems that removing \n actually works but it still doesn't remove the new line.

[Agnius]

If you want to replace text with something that is also a regular expression, you should also enable the "Activate escape sequences" toggle on the Replace text action. But what you've shown in the screenshot is not how it works, really. You cannot use full patterns like [A-z] or \d in the "Replace with" field. You can only use placeholders for specific symbols, such as \s for a white space or \t for a tab.

I am still not quite sure what you're trying to accomplish. Seems like you're replacing newlines in a list of text values. Can you please share a screenshot of your flow, so we can get a better idea of what actions you are using and whether they're laid out correctly?

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[devinpal]

So basically what I'm trying to do is to extract all texts with "Article X section Y" in a pdf file.

I used the regex (?i)article\s?\n?\s\d\d?\s?\n?((?i)section\s?\n?\d\d?)? so:
1. I get the "Article X section Y" in the pdf file, then save the texts in a list

2. I can still get the "Article X section Y" text even if there's no spacing (for example ArticleX sectionY), thus the \s?

3. I can still get the "Article X section Y" text even if there's more than two digits of X and Y's number but less than 3 digits, thus the \d\d?

4. I can still get the "Article X section Y" text even if there's a new line separating the text, thus the \n?

But, apparently when the source pdf text is separated by a line, the extracted text is also separated by a line. What I'm trying to accomplish is getting an extracted text that's just one line with the format of "Article X section Y".

So I tried removing \n and \s. Removing \n somehow doesn't work so I tried removing \s, which worked but then all the characters has no space. So, I tried adding space between alphabet and number but I don't know how to do that.

I hope that explains my intention, thank you.

[Agnius]

I got that part. I'm not quite sure about how you're trying to replace the newline. I have already asked you to provide a screenshot of your Replace text action that does not work (for replacing newlines), but you have not provided it. Can you please provide some screenshots of your flow, including the details of the Replace text action, as well as the other actions that manipulate the text?

I'm quite confident it should work with \n, but you may be using it incorrectly. If you show us what you've done (in the form of screenshots), we might be able to pinpoint the problem.

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[devinpal]

Sorry for the trouble, this is what I did to remove the new line.

and this is what I did to get the text.

[Agnius]

Okay. And then you somehow put it into a list?

[devinpal]

Yes, I made a loop to put all the texts in a list.

[Agnius]

Why exactly are you using Parse text inside the loop if you're already iterating through a list of matches that were retrieved via Parse text earlier?

The way I see it, you should simply do this:

• Parse text - to get the matches from the PDF text
• Create new list
• For each CurrentItem in Matches
  • Replace text in CurrentItem
  • Add item to list to add the replaced text to the list
• End

And then at the end make sure you're using the %ArticleList% variable and not %Matches% when you want to use the text after replacing newlines.

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[devinpal]

Thank you very much for the replies.

I tried simplifying the flow (I removed the second parse) and used the replace \n.

But when I tried displaying it as a message in PAD, the new line is still there.

I tried exporting the list as a .txt file and the new line's also there.

Am I still doing something wrong? What information should I provide further?
Thank you in advance.

[Agnius · Accepted solution]

You may have a carriage return there. Try replacing \r?\n? instead of just the \n.

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[devinpal]

It worked! Thank you!

If you don't mind, can you tell me what is carriage return and what does \r?\n? do?

Also, is there a way to insert a space in the output text because now I get "Article9 section 1"

[Agnius]

A carriage return is a special character that is similar to newline. See here for more info: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carriage_return

\r matches a carriage return and \n matches a newline. The question marks indicate that both are optional, so that it works if any or both of them is present.

If you want to replace it with a whitespace, use %" "% as the value to replace it with (a whitespace between quotes) or \s with escape sequences enabled.

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[devinpal]

How about inserting a space between two characters? Is it possible?
For example I want to make the text "ArticleXsectionY" into "Article X section Y"

[Agnius]

You can use Replace text with regex to replace specific empty strings with a whitespace.

Using (?<=[A-z])(?=\d) will replace the empty string after a word and followed by a digit. You can replace it with %" "% and that will result in a whitespace.

You can then also reverse that to also add a whitespace after a digit and followed by a word in another Replace text action using (?<=\d)(?=[A-z]) as the regex pattern.

If you combine both, you'll get your desired result.

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