padding string in BPL

Question

Question

Lewis Greitzer · Aug 28, 2017

Hi folks, I'm trying to pad my patient MRN to 10 characters before I do a SQL lookup in my BPL. I've tried various approaches, and have not been successful.

When I add a "code" statement with the following code, I get an error as below.

set context.NewID = "0000000000"
set $EXTRACT(context.NewID,10-len(context.PatientID)) = context.PatientID

ERROR <Ens>ErrException: <OBJECT DISPATCH>zS8+5 ^CHSLI.BPLQueryDatabaseforPatientID.Thread1.1 *Property 'NewID'
in class 'CHSLI.BPLQueryDatabaseforPatientID.Context'
must be MultiDimensional -- logged as '-'
number - @'
set $EXTRACT(context.NewID,10-len(context.PatientID)) = context.PatientID'

Any ideas/help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Discussion (9)1

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Julius Kavay · Aug 28, 2017

Cache dies not like an object property as a left side argument,

but you can solve the problem much simpler:

set context.NewID=$tr($j(context.PatientID,10)," ",0)

By the way, if your solution would work, the result would be longer then 10 chars

for example, if context.PatientID=123 then you

would get: "000000123000"

instead of: "0000000123"

Regards,

Julius

0 0

score 1 · Answer 1 · 2017-08-28T09:16:19-04:00

$EXCTRACT() and also $LI(), $Piece()
is not allowed at the left side of SET when the target is an object property

use an intermediate variable instead.

e.g.

set tmp="0000000000"
set $EXTRACT(tmp,10-len(context.PatientID)) = context.PatientID
set context.NewID=tmp

it might be easier that way

set context.NewID=$EXTRACT("0000000000"_context.PatientID,*-9,*)

score 1 · Answer 2 · 2017-08-28T09:36:13-04:00

Robert Cemper · Aug 28, 2017

you missed the $TRANSLATE(.....," ",0) around

pls. set the hook to your preferred solution

1 0

score 1 · Answer 3 · 2017-08-28T09:57:59-04:00

Lewis Greitzer · Aug 28, 2017

I like this approach. Didn't know I could call the Method directly from the BPL. Thanks.

1 0

score 1 · Answer 4 · 2017-08-28T09:20:47-04:00

Provided your patient MRN doesn't contain whitespaces, you can use $justify to pad string to required length and $translate to convert whitespaces into zeros.

w $tr($j("a", 10), " ", 0)
>000000000a

score 0 · Answer 5 · 2017-08-28T10:15:23-04:00

Lewis Greitzer · Aug 28, 2017

Got it, I did miss the $tr

0 0

score 1 · Answer 6 · 2017-08-28T17:39:03-04:00

Robert Cemper · Aug 28, 2017

COS shorthand is hard to read in browser; I personally prefer full size COS + Courier as font.

1 0

score 0 · Answer 7 · 2017-08-28T09:27:56-04:00

The second approach (set context.NewID=$EXTRACT("0000000000"_context.PatientID,*-9,*)) worked great. When I checked the documentation for the $JUSTIFY, it doesn't say you can specify your pad character.

Looked like only spaces to me: $JUSTIFY(expression,width[,decimal])

score 0 · Answer 8 · 2017-08-28T09:45:42-04:00

I'm not exactly clear on which you intend to hold the new ID (context.newID maybe by the name?)

Regardless, you can also use the built-in pad method:

set context.NewID = ##class(Ens.Rule.FunctionSet).Pad(context.PatientID,-10,0)

where context.PatientID holds your original Patient ID. -10 means you want to prepend to be 10 characters, and "0" is the character you want prepended.