uCalc Transform lets you search or transform text in innovative ways. But just how would you use it? Click on one of the following to find out:
Scenario: Finding and highlighting a list of words.
Problem
You are a paralegal. During the discovery stage, an attorney hands you a list of 55 words/phrases related to a case. You have many files to browse through, and want to highlight all occurrences of these words in each file you look at. What do you do?
Solution
Simply enter the words/phrases in the Find boxes. Click Find. All the words are highlighted for you. Save this search for subsequent sessions.
Have another scenario you'd like a solution to? Just ask.
Scenario: Searching HTML files for hard to find data
Problem
You have directories full of HTML files. From time to time you want to find which file(s) contain a specific piece of data. However due to the nature of what you're trying to find, Notepad's Ctrl-F just won't do. You try RegEx in a different editor, but it gets complicated real fast, and you spend more time trying to formulate a RegEx pattern than it would take you to open all of the files manually one by one. Maybe you are looking for specific GIF file; but you don't remember the name; you just remember it included several dashes in it, or that the name was relatively long. Or maybe you want to find all images that have a height larger than 768 pixels. Or you want to find all tags with class=center. Or you want to find tags in old HTML files where attributes are not surrounded by quotes, etc.
Solution
ucFind, which comes with uCalc Transform, is a simple command prompt tool that lets you use uCalc patterns to search across any text file. It is designed for problems like the ones aforementioned. ucFind.Bat is actually a simple batch file that taps into uCalc Transform to filter out the results.
Find all a href tags
Find only a href tags with uCalc in it
Find png and gif images
Have another scenario you'd like a solution to? Just ask.
Scenario: Changing a plain text list into an HTML list
Problem
Using Notepad, I had written a list by simply preceding each line with a * (star character). Now, I wanted to post this same list online, but using HTML bullets instead. I started manually surrounding each line with the <li> and </li> HTML tags. But the list was long, and I didn't have much time. Plus the task was just too tedious. What if I got tired after the 10th line and mistyped one of the tags. Wasn't there an easier way?
Solution
Turns out the actual solution was even simpler to implement than to describe. I wanted to change each line that says * followed by some text, to <li>that same text</li>. Well the solution consisted of simply typing * {text} in the Find box, and <li>{text}</li> in the Replace box, and clicking Transform.
Have another scenario you'd like a solution to? Just ask.
Scenario: Filtering out certain parts of text
Problem
You are browsing through the raw text of Shakespeare's Macbeth as downloaded from http://shakespeare.mit.edu/macbeth/full.html. Before you get into it, you first want to quickly see the list of scenes. You're not sure how or if you can do it with Notepad or a word processor. You're not a programmer, and don't want to have to do something complicated just for this.
Solution
Just filter out the text you want, using uCalc Transform. All you do is enter SCENE {etc} in the first box, and {Self} in the second box, and click Filter (if you click Filter beforehand, {Self} will already be in the box for you).
Note: The filter box does not have to contain {Self}. It can contain any rearrangement of the pattern as in the example below, which filters out the Beatitudes in the book of Matthew.
Have another scenario you'd like a solution to? Just ask.
Scenario: Auto-generating source code
Problem
I have developed DLL components for use by other programmers. Customers use an assortment of different programming language compilers such as C#, Visual Basic, Visual C++, C++ Builder, Delphi, and more. Each language requires a different header (some have several: one for 32-bit, another for 64-bit). There is a number of header files I need to update for each new product release. I used to do this by hand. But it was just too time consuming, tedious, and error prone. Is there a way to just auto-generate these headers?
Solution
I created Transforms that take one header, and automatically convert it into headers for all the other languages. When I want to release an update, I just run a batch file that automatically performs translations to all the other languages. The time I save allows me to focus more on adding features that customers want, and releasing new product versions more often.
Have another scenario you'd like a solution to? Just ask.
Some of the things you might use it for include: