Paired list with different delimiters - coldfusion

Question

I have a list which I want to split out and insert into a table. The list contains paired names and values:
R0006^^1.00000000~~R0042^^1.00000000~~R0049^^1.00000000~~R0072^^1.00000000~~R0088^^3.00000000~~R0092^^1.00000000~~R0106^^1.00000000
How can I loop over this list and insert the names and values into a database table as I am struggling to get in my head the use of different delimiters and their associated values.
Many Thanks
JC

Answer 1

ColdFusion's tags & functions don't fully deal with multi-character delimiters very well. ArrayToList() supports multiple delimiters but most most other list-related functions do not.
If your data never contains a ~ or ^ by itself, I would take advantage of that and replace the 2-length delimiters with one-length delmiters.
(Edit: As Leigh points out in comments, a ReReplace, or ReplaceList() is not needed in this case as CF ignores empty elements by default). It won't change the output to remove it, but that's the point, having it there isn't doing anything useful either. Commented out for clarity of point.)
<cfset dList = "R0006^^1.00000000~~R0042^^1.00000000~~R0049^^1.00000000~~R0072^^1.00000000~~R0088^^3.00000000~~R0092^^1.00000000~~R0106^^1.00000000" />
<!---cfset dList = ReReplace(dList,"(~|\^)\1","\1","ALL")--->
<cfset dArray = ListToArray(dList,"~",false) />
<cfloop array="#dArray#" index="a1">
<cfquery...>
insert into mytable(lname,lvalue)
values(<cfqueryparam value="#listfirst(a1,"^")#">,<cfqueryparam value="#listlast(a1,"^^")#">)
</cfquery>
</cfloop>
The nice part about this is that it has pretty good backwards compatibility as well.
However, this does assume that each item in the ~ delimited list has two sub-items. If it does not, and only has the field label, you can do this.
<cfset dList = "R0006^^1.00000000~~R0042^^1.00000000~~R0049^^1.00000000~~R0072^^1.00000000~~R0088^^3.00000000~~R0092^^1.00000000~~R0106^^1.00000000" />
<!---cfset dList = ReReplace(dList,"(~|\^)\1","\1","ALL")--->
<cfset dArray = ListToArray(dList,"~",false) />
<cfloop array="#dArray#" index="a1">
<cfquery...>
insert into mytable(lname,lvalue)
values(<cfqueryparam value="#listfirst(a1,"^")#">,<cfqueryparam value="#(listlen(a1,"^") gt 1 ? listlast(a1,"^") : "")#">)
</cfquery>
</cfloop>
Finally, as David Faber points out in the comments, you can use ReplaceList(dlist, "~~,^^", "~,^") instead of ReReplace(dList,"(~|\^){2}","\1","ALL") which will achieve the same goal but has the added benefit of being easier to read for people who may not be comfortable with Regular Expressions.

Answer 2

I would take a slightly different approach (for the reasons stated in my comments ... what if the character sequences ~^ or ^~ exist in the data, or even the single characters ^ or ~?) and turn the list into JSON, then deserialize it into a struct:
<cfset the_list = "R0006^^1.00000000~~R0042^^1.00000000~~R0049^^1.00000000~~R0072^^1.00000000~~R0088^^3.00000000~~R0092^^1.00000000~~R0106^^1.00000000" />
<!--- Escape characters that need to be escaped --->
<cfset the_list = replace(the_list, "\", "\\", "all") />
<cfset the_list = replace(the_list, """", "\""", "all") />
<cfset the_list = replace(the_list, "^^", """:""", "all") />
<cfset the_list = "{""" & replace(the_list, "~~", """,""", "all") & """}" />
<cfset the_coll = deserializeJSON(the_list) />
The only difficulty with the above would be if there were duplicate keys. In that case one might use an array of structs - this can be accomplished simply by changing the line replacing the double tilde ~~:
<cfset the_list = "[{""" & replace(the_list, "~~", """},{""", "all") & """}]" />
Then loop over the array to insert into the database.