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QuickFormat

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Use this command to perform quick, simple changes to ASCII files. The command reads in an ASCII file that the user specifies and generates a new file (or overwrites the original file), filtering out the following characters (as indicated by the command parameters): blanks, double quotation marks, or any control characters (any non-printable character). You can also use the QuickFormat command to replace all occurrences of a string in the ASCII file with another string.

Syntax:

QUICKFORMAT FileName [OutputFileName] [Blank] [Quotes] [Control] [Replace "String1" "String2"]

where:

  • FileName is an ASCII file containing the data. It can include a complete or partial folder path in the format C:\...\FileName. If FileName includes spaces, enclose it in double quotation marks; for example:

    @"C:\My Documents\My Data.txt"

    Note: If the document is in the same location as lv_af.exe, you do not need to specify the drive or path.

  • OutputFileName is optional and is the name of the output file. If not specified, the original file is overwritten.
  • Blank indicates that all spaces in the named file are removed.
  • Quotes indicates that all double quotation marks in the named file are removed.
  • Control indicates that all control characters in the file named in FileName are removed.
  • Replace indicates that all instances of the string specified by "String1" in the file named in FileName are replaced by the value specified by "String2".
  • "String1" is a character string to replace, enclosed in double quotation marks.
  • "String2" is a character string to replace String1, enclosed in double quotation marks.

Syntax example:

QUICKFORMAT "May data.txt" "June data.txt" REPLACE "May" "June"

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