GET_TOKEN: Extracting a Token Based on a String of Delimiters

How to:

GET_TOKEN extracts a token (substring) based on a string that can contain multiple characters, each of which represents a single-character delimiter.

Syntax: How to Extract a Token Based on a String of Delimiters 

GET_TOKEN(string, delimiter_string, occurrence)

where:

string

Alphanumeric

Is the input string from which the token will be extracted. This can be an alphanumeric field or constant.

delimiter_string

Alphanumeric constant

Is a string that contains the list of delimiter characters. For example, '; ,' contains three delimiter characters, semi-colon, blank space, and comma.

occurrence

Integer constant

Is a positive integer that specifies the token to be extracted. A negative integer will be accepted in the syntax, but will not extract a token. The value zero (0) is not supported.

Example: Extracting a Token Based on a String of Delimiters

The following request defines an input string and two tokens based on a list of delimiters that contains the characters comma (,), semicolon (;), and slash (/). 

DEFINE FILE EMPLOYEE
InputString/A20 = 'ABC,DEF;GHI/JKL';
FirstToken/A20 WITH DEPARTMENT = GET_TOKEN(InputString, ',;/', 1);
FourthToken/A20 WITH DEPARTMENT = GET_TOKEN(InputString, ',;/', 4);
END
TABLE FILE EMPLOYEE
PRINT InputString FirstToken FourthToken
WHERE READLIMIT EQ 1
ON TABLE SET PAGE NOLEAD
ON TABLE SET STYLE *
GRID = OFF,$
END

The output is shown in the following image. The first token was extracted using the comma (,) as the delimiter. The fourth token was extracted using the slash (/) as the delimiter.