Date:         Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:11:05 -0800
Reply-To:     tko <ko.tiffany@gmail.com>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         tko <ko.tiffany@gmail.com>
Subject:      Curly brace plague?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Hello,

I work with survey data files with raw variable labels that are filled with
unecessary programming characters/strings.  Here's what removes almost
everything I don't want, except for "*{#Company1}*", probably because of the
curly braces issue.  Any advice on how to escape a curly brace within a
string?

Thanks,
tko

begin program.
import spss, spssaux, cgi
vdict=spssaux.VariableDict()
nvars = len(vdict)

html_escape_table = {
    "&": "&amp;",
    ">": "&gt;",
    "<": "&lt;",
    "/": "&fs;",
    }

def html_escape(text):
    """Produce entities within text."""
    return "".join(html_escape_table.get(c,c) for c in text)

for i in range(nvars):
    myvarname = vdict[i].VariableName
    myvarlabel = html_escape(vdict[i].VariableLabel)
    myvarlabel = myvarlabel.replace(" :","")
    myvarlabel = myvarlabel.replace("&lt;b&gt;","")
    myvarlabel = myvarlabel.replace("&lt;&fs;b&gt;","")
    myvarlabel = myvarlabel.replace("*{#Company1}*", "[Company]")
    myvarlabel = myvarlabel.strip(" '")
    spss.Submit(r"""
        variable labels  %s %s .
                        """ %(myvarname, myvarlabel))
end program.


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