{"id":1121,"date":"2009-02-06T06:48:07","date_gmt":"2009-02-06T14:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sapien.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/06\/are-you-leading-me-on\/"},"modified":"2009-02-06T06:48:07","modified_gmt":"2009-02-06T14:48:07","slug":"are-you-leading-me-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/06\/are-you-leading-me-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Are you leading me on?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently in the VBScript forum at ScriptingAnswers.com<\/a> there was a question about creating a file name from the current date, but with leading zeros. This is a pretty common question. It is easy enough to get the month or day portion of the current day.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
dy=Day(Now)<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
However there is no VBScript function to format this to provide a leading 0. Neither FormatDate<\/strong> or FormatNumber<\/strong> can help. So instead I offered a function. Here is a modified version of what I originally offered that is a little more flexible.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
'\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/<\/span><\/pre>\n
' Pad text with a leading character<\/span><\/pre>\n
'\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/<\/span><\/pre>\n
Function<\/span> PadText(strText,iLen,strChar)<\/pre>\n
 <\/pre>\n
If<\/span> Len(strText) >= iLen Then<\/span> <\/pre>\n
    strText=strText<\/pre>\n
Else<\/span> <\/pre>\n
    Do<\/span> Until<\/span> Len(strText)=iLen<\/pre>\n
        strText=strChar & strText<\/pre>\n
    Loop<\/span><\/pre>\n
End<\/span> If<\/span><\/pre>\n
 <\/pre>\n
PadText=strText<\/pre>\n
 <\/pre>\n
End<\/span> Function<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
This function takes a string, a length, and a character to pad to the front to make it equal to the requested length. In this situation we want to use a 0 to make the string 2 characters long. Here’s how I can incorporate this function.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
mo=PadText(Month(Now),2,0)<\/pre>\n
dy=PadText(Day(Now),2,0)<\/pre>\n
yr=Year(Now)<\/pre>\n
   <\/pre>\n
sFileName = \"C:\\Report_\"<\/span> & mo & \"-\"<\/span> & dy & \"-\"<\/span> & yr & \".txt\"<\/span> <\/pre>\n
 <\/pre>\n
WScript.Echo sFileName<\/pre>\n
'returns C:\\Report_02-06-2009.txt<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The Month and Day portion of the current date are processed by the function which uses a 0 to make them 2 characters long. If the string is already long enough, then the function returns the original string. But we’re not limited to something like leading 0s. Look at this.<\/p>\n
\n
\n
myArray=Array(\"Jeff\"<\/span>,\"Alex\"<\/span>,\"Scott\"<\/span>,\"David\"<\/span>,\"Stephen\"<\/span>)<\/pre>\n
For<\/span> Each<\/span> sName In<\/span> myArray<\/pre>\n
  WScript.Echo PadText(sName,10,\".\"<\/span>)<\/pre>\n
Next<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Each string in the array will be padded so that the total string length is 10 characters. The string will be padded with a period which produces output like this:<\/p>\n
……Jeff
……Alex
…..Scott
…..David
…Stephen<\/font> <\/p>\n
This might be useful in formatting information in a report. You could even skip the period and use a space.<\/p>\n
WScript.Echo PadText(sName,10,” “) <\/font><\/p>\n
This function pads to the right, but it wouldn’t be to difficult to create a function that pads to the left. Even better, modify this function so that you can specify left or right padding! But I’ll leave that for you to try out. <\/p>\n
\n
Download a text version of this function here.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
If you need help with VBScript, please use the forums at ScriptingAnswers.com<\/a> and don’t forget about my complete VBScript reference book WSH and VBScript Core: TFM<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently in the VBScript forum at ScriptingAnswers.com there was a question about creating a file name from the current date, but with leading zeros. This is a pretty common question. It is easy enough to get the month or day portion of the current day.<\/p>\n
dy=Day(Now)<\/p>\n
However there is no VBScript function to format this to provide a leading 0. Neither FormatDate or FormatNumber can help. So instead I offered a function. Here is a modified version of what I originally offered that is a little more flexible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[283,24],"tags":[198,57,996],"class_list":["post-1121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-howto","category-vbscript","tag-function","tag-scripting","tag-vbscript"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}