Item10278: exclude parameter doesn't seem to work (or not as expected)

According to Extensions.FilterPlugin

exclude="...": skip occurences that match this regular expression

However, I've tried various combinations and can't seem to make exclude work.

Unfortunately, there are no "exclude" examples in the docs.

For example, say I want to exclude any header lines. The example at Extensions.FilterPlugin uses skip but let's imagine I have several tables, so "skip" isn't going to help.

I should be able to use exclude to exclude header rows, e.g. matching the pattern \|\s*\*.

No matter what patterns I try or where I put exclude in the argument list, I cannot get these rows to be excluded.

%STARTINCLUDE%
---+++ Extract table data 1
| *Pos* | *Description* | *Hours* |
|  1 | onsite troubleshooting |  3 |
|  2 | normalizing data to new format |  10 |
|  3 | testing server performace |  5 |

---+++ Extract table data 2
| *Pos* | *Description* | *Hours* |
|  1 | onsite testing |  4 |
|  2 | converting data to secondary format | 8 |
|  3 | upgrading OS |  12 |
%STOPINCLUDE%

%EXTRACT{topic="Item10278" 
  expand="off" 
  pattern="\|\s*(.*?)\s*\|\s*(.*?)\s*\|\s*(.*?)\s*\|" 
  format="   * it took $3 hours $2$n"
  exclude="\|\s*\*"
}%

Extract table data

Pos	Description	Hours
1	onsite troubleshooting	3
2	normalizing data to new format	10
3	testing server performace	5

Extract table data 2

Pos	Description	Hours
1	onsite testing	4
2	converting data to secondary format	8
3	upgrading OS	12

• it took Hours hours Description
• it took 3 hours onsite troubleshooting
• it took 10 hours normalizing data to new format
• it took 5 hours testing server performace
• it took Hours hours Description
• it took 4 hours onsite testing
• it took 8 hours converting data to secondary format
• it took 12 hours upgrading OS

-- VickiBrown - 21 Jan 2011

That's probably a docu flaw: the exclude pattern is checked against the formatted string, not the list item from the source. So your app should be fine using

%EXTRACT{topic="%TOPIC%" 
  expand="off" 
  pattern="\|\s*(.*?)\s*\|\s*(.*?)\s*\|\s*(.*?)\s*\|" 
  format="   * it took $3 hours $2$n"
  exclude=".*\*Hours\*.*"
}%

... as Hours is still part of the output.

Let's check this out:

• it took 3 hours onsite troubleshooting
• it took 10 hours normalizing data to new format
• it took 5 hours testing server performace
• it took 4 hours onsite testing
• it took 8 hours converting data to secondary format
• it took 12 hours upgrading OS

-- Main.MichaelDaum - 09 Sep 2016 - 09:49

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