how to strip print control codes (PCL type) from a document using a regular expression in C#

Question

I have an archive of PCL files. I would like to make a console app that would read a file, strip out all print control codes, and write the codes to a separate file, leaving the rest of the document in tack. I think I can do this with a regex(), but I'm not sure how to approach the task. My language of choice is C#. Any advice you can provide will be greatly appreciated.

Mark

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mark larsen

Answer 1

Interesting task, do you have some samples?

Maybe this can help you:

http://openpcl.sourceforge.net/

I've also found this guide https://support.transfrm.com/attachments/token/ontu8wag731xpbi/?name=PCL.pdf over here

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1339517/looking-for-wcf-basichttpbinding-https-tutorial-or-samples.

Answer 2

sample:
  (s0s0B&d@&k10.000H
 DICT D&T: 02/15/11 1229   TRANS D&T: 02/18/11 2004   BY: CJR (s0s0B&d@&k10.000H
 (s0s0B&d@&k10.000H
 (s0s0B&d@&k10.000H
 (s0s0B&d@&k10.000H
 (s0s0B&d@&k10.000H
 Run: 02/22/11-12:27 by DOE,JANE A(s0s0B&d@&k10.000H
 (s0s0B&d@&k10.000H
 PT PROGRESS NOTES - Additional copy                                           Page 1 of 1(s0s0B&d@&k10.000H(8U(s0p12h10v3T)10U)s0p12h10v3T(s0s0B&d@&k10.000H

I can now strip out the codes using 

           

publicstaticstring RemoveBetween(string s, char begin, char end)
        {
            Regex regex = newRegex(string.Format("\\{0}.*?{1}", begin, end));
            return regex.Replace(s, string.Empty);
        }
I try to capture the codes by calling 

        
publicstaticstring[] getPclCodes(string line)
        {
            string pattern = "\\x1B.*?H";
            string[] pclCodes = Regex.Split(line, pattern);
 
            return pclCodes;
        }
before RemoveBetween(), but the strings that should have commands in them appear to be empty.
  

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mark larsen

Answer 3

Hi Mark,

Welcome to the MSDN Forum.

What kind of string do you want to get?

Thank you.

Best regards,

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Mike Feng
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.

Answer 4

I am looking to write 2 documents from each PCL file. One with just the document text, and the other with just the document print commands. I have a working output for the text document, but when I split each line into substrings, only the document text shows up. the regex.Split returns the proper amount of strings, but the strings that should contain the PCL codes are empty strings.

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mark larsen

Answer 5

My main question is how to remove the codes. I have solved that problem. My current issue is how to save those removed codes to another file.

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mark larsen