B4R Question Convert String to Number

[Helmut S]

Hello everybody,

I have a problem when I try to convert a string to a numeric value.

Example:

I get a DateTime value in the following message "DT20170920111250S??" with the emedded date of "20170920" (09/20/2017) and the embedded time of "111250" (11:12:50).

I want to call the following Sub (to set the RTC), but I have to pass the parameters in numeric form (as bytes) and not the ASCII value:

setDS3231time(50, 12, 11, 0, 20, 9, 17)

Sub setDS3231time(second As Byte, minute As Byte, hour As Byte, dayofweek As Byte,dayOfMonth As Byte, months As Byte, years As Byte)
 
    'First byte=0 --> Set Next input To start at the seconds register
    'Next bytes (in BCD): second,minutes, hours, dayOfWeek,dayOfMonth,month,year
    wirevar.WriteTo(RTC_ADDRESS,Array As Byte(0,decToBcd(second),decToBcd(minute),decToBcd(hour),decToBcd(dayofweek),decToBcd(dayOfMonth),decToBcd(months),decToBcd(years)))

End Sub

How can I do this correctly? Any help is highly appreciated.

H.

 

[Cableguy]

String manipulation is a tricky thing in b4R... as they are immutable...
I think you still could just extract the values directly to int variable without creating "temp" strings...
Something like

Dim myDateTime as string = myreceivedvalue
Dim year as int = myDateTime.substring2(3,7)
Repeat for each int variable

 

[Helmut S]

Hi Cableguy,

sorry, but that doesn't work, since the String Type has no substring2() and even if you took the substring2() from ByteConverter te result cannot be assigned to an int.

 

[Misterbates]

Does B4R have Regex? If so then the pattern [^0-9]*(.{4})(.{2})(.{2})(.{2})(.{2})(.{2}) would split the string into the necessary pieces.

Could each of those pieces then be assigned to an Int? If not then a small utility routine to convert ASCII chars to the equivalent numbers (select case "0", case "1" etc.) should do the trick.

 

[Helmut S]

Thanks to all of you, I finally found out myself, and it was quite simple, indeed.

Here's the code that works:

                Dim dt() As Byte = bc.StringFromBytes(Message)
                Dim sMyyear As Int = bc.StringFromBytes(Array As Byte(dt(5), dt(6)))
                Dim sMyMonth As Int = bc.StringFromBytes(Array As Byte(dt(7), dt(8)))
                Dim sMyDay As Int = bc.StringFromBytes(Array As Byte(dt(9), dt(10)))
                Dim sMyHour As Int = bc.StringFromBytes(Array As Byte(dt(11), dt(12)))
                Dim sMyMinute As Int = bc.StringFromBytes(Array As Byte(dt(13), dt(14)))
                Dim sMySecond As Int = bc.StringFromBytes(Array As Byte(dt(15), dt(16)))
               
                setDS3231time(sMySecond, sMyMinute,sMyHour,0,sMyDay,sMyMonth,sMyyear)

Again, thanks to you all.

H.

 

[Cableguy]

Instead of defining your final variables as string, try defining them as int, that will save you precious memory

 

[Helmut S]

That's true, I tried to do so, but it didn't work. Took me some time to figure out this solution, even if it's possibly not the best one.

 

[Helmut S]

Cableguy,

you were right. Tried it again and this time it worked o.k. I've updated the code above.