Is there a function that removes all nonalphanumeric numbers in Fortran? - fortran

Question

New to Fortran,been trying to think of a function that replaces all non alphanumeric characters and spaces on a string so that it turns something like [AS:1] to AS1.
Anyone here got a clue how to?
Like I got a trimmer for open spaces to work but I don't know how to make it work for anything that's a non-alphanumeric character.

Answer 1

The intrinsic function SCANcan be used for membership searches.
If we have a character char of length-1 and a set set of non-zero size, then we have that SCAN(char, set) returns 1 (0) if char is in (not in) the set. (SCAN will return 0 if the set is of size zero.)
This functions is elemental so, for example, SCAN(char_array, set) returns an indicator for which elements of char_array are in the set.
We also have PACK which returns another array corresponding to a selection mask:
print*, PACK(char_array, SCAN(char_array,set).eq.1)
Which means we can write a subroutine like
subroutine s(in, out, keep, len)
integer, intent(in) :: len
character, intent(in) :: in(len), keep*(*)
character, intent(out) :: out(len)
integer :: i
out = PACK(in, SCAN(in,keep).eq.1, [(' ',i=1,len)])
end subroutine s
taking an input character array of size len and returning an output character array of the same size with the elements which are in keep (and trailing elements being blanks).
Naturally, we don't like working with character arrays instead of scalars, so let's provide a nice subroutine using sequence association:
subroutine strip(in, out, keep)
character(*), intent(in) :: in, keep
character(*), intent(out) :: out
call s(in, out, keep, LEN(in))
end subroutine
Complete example:
module stripping
implicit none
private s
contains
subroutine strip(in, out, keep)
character(*), intent(in) :: in, keep
character(*), intent(out) :: out
call s(in, out, keep, len(in))
end subroutine strip
subroutine s(in, out, keep, len)
integer, intent(in) :: len
character, intent(in) :: in(len), keep*(*)
character, intent(out) :: out(len)
integer :: i
out = PACK(in, SCAN(in,keep).eq.1, [(' ',i=1,len)])
end subroutine s
end module stripping
program test
use stripping, only : strip
implicit none
character(10) in, out
character(*), parameter :: keep="abcd"
in = "a1b*2sdc]a"
call strip(in, out, keep)
print*, TRIM(out)
end program
There are doubtless better and clearer ways to do this: this answer mostly serves to have you think about what intrinsic functions there are and how they can be applied. There isn't an intrinsic function to do what you want in one step.

Answer 2

You need to define an external verification procedure that tells if a given character is to be kept or discarded. Then replace the equivalence check typically done in replace routines with this external function.
Here is an implementation that achieves the goal,
module str_mod
implicit none
integer, parameter :: IK = kind(0)
integer, parameter :: SK = kind("a")
integer, parameter :: LK = kind(.false.)
contains
! Returns `.true.` if it is a desired character.
function isDesired(char) result(desired)
character(1, SK), intent(in) :: char
logical(LK) :: desired
desired = (SK_"0" <= char .and. char <= SK_"9") .or. &
(SK_"A" <= char .and. char <= SK_"Z") .or. &
(SK_"a" <= char .and. char <= SK_"z")
end function
function replace(str, isDesired) result(strrep)
character(*, SK), intent(in) :: str
character(:, SK), allocatable :: strrep
procedure(logical(LK)) :: isDesired
integer(IK) :: i, counter
allocate(character(len(str), SK) :: strrep)
counter = 0_IK
do i = 1, len(str, kind = IK)
if (.not. isDesired(str(i:i))) cycle
counter = counter + 1_IK
strrep(counter:counter) = str(i:i)
end do
strrep = strrep(1:counter)
end function
end module str_mod
use str_mod
print *, replace("Fortran", isDesired)
print *, replace("(Fortran)", isDesired)
print *, replace("(Fortran) (Is) [_A_] (GREAT) {language}.", isDesired)
print *, replace("[AS:1]", isDesired)
end
Here is the program output,
Fortran
Fortran
FortranIsAGREATlanguage
AS1
Test it here. Note that this implementation performs two allocations of the output strings, which you could likely avoid by counting the desired characters in str first and then allocating the output string to the proper size and filling it with the identified characters. But any performance gain or difference will likely be negligible in most scenarios. You would likely see better performance benefits if you instead reimplement replace() in the above as a subroutine with str input argument being an allocatable with intent(inout). In such a case, you can avoid an extra copy on exit from the procedure, which can lead to ~25% runtime speedup for small arrays. But again, such performance concerns become relevant only when you call replace() on the order of billions of times.

Answer 3

You would have to write a function to do it. As inspiration, here's a subroutine I recently wrote to do SQL "escaping" of quotes in a string. The key here is having separate indexes for input and output position. Your requirement is even easier - if the character is not alphanumeric or space, don't advance the output length. There are several ways of doing the comparison, an exercise left for the reader.
subroutine escape (text)
character(*), intent(inout) :: text
character(100) :: newtext
integer i,j
newtext = ' '
j = 1
do i=1,len_trim(text)
if (text(i:i) == '"') then
newtext(j:j) = "\"
j = j + 1
end if
newtext(j:j) = text(i:i)
j = j + 1
end do
text = newtext
end subroutine escape