crystal reports trimming strings - crystal-reports

Question

I’m new on crystal reports and don’t have much knowledge of programming. I’m looking for a formula that will separate the notes (example: To Syd+We miss you+From Bill&Pat) into 3 different field. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

local stringVar subject := 'To Syd+We miss you+From Bill&Pat';
local numberVar location := instr(subject, '+');
if location > 0 then
left(subject, location)
else
subject;
I have hardcoded the string to be modified, but you can replace it with {table.field}
Also, if there will definitely always be + you can simplify things by removing the if.

Answer 2

a note that Lee's answer will get you the leftmost bit of text only.
instr(subject,"+") returns the location of the leftmost presence of +
left(subject,location) pulls out a chunk of subject of 'location' number of characters
if you then wanted to fish out the second and third bit, you could do this:
local stringvar subject := "string1+string2+string3";
local numberVar location1;
local numberVar location2;
location1 := instr(subject, "+");
location2 := instr(location1+1, subject, "+");
/////this instr only starts to look from location1 for the next leftmost + and I'll show below how you can use
( if location1 > 0
then left(subject, location1-1)
/////use Lee's 'left' command to bring up the first bit, I added the minus1 so that the actual + would not show
else "missing first +" )
+chrw(13)+ //I was displaying this on screen so I added a ENTER, you can get rid of this line
( if location2 > 0
/////error checking is sanity-saving sooner or later
then
(
mid(subject, location1+1, location2-1-location1)
/////pulls a chunk from within subject, starting at location1+1 [to get past the + at location1 itself],
/////going rightward to grab 'location2-1-location1' characters
/////(play a few times with the +1/-1 to get hte idea.
/////try it with a two-character seperator, say "To john12Hello12From jane", helped me get my head straight
+ chrw(13)+ //again, this is just for my proofing
right(subject, length(subject)-location2)
/////pulls a chunk from the right of subject, of size 'length of subject' minus location2,
/////so everything from the end until hit that +
)
else "missing second +" )