Partial Filename Text Variable

Hi,

if you have a string like that:

var name = "MyName.indd";

and you want to get the 3rd, the 4th and the 5th character of the name, you can simply do a concatenation of single characters where numbering starts with 0 as the first item:

var name = "MyName.indd";
var thirdToFithChar = name[2] + name[3] + name[4] ;

Or do it with method slice().

Quoting documentation:

String.slice( startSlice , endSlice ) extracts a substring of the given string and returns it as a new string. The substring begins at startSlice, and includes all characters up to, but not including the character at the index endSlice.

var name = "MyName.indd";
var thirdToFithChar = name.slice(2,5) ;

But first check the value of length of the string. Could be your file name is not five characters long.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Then you could do something like this:

var s = "PSCP72_MIRRORS_PRES_R2.indd";
var a = s.split("_");
var truncatedName = a[0] + a[a.length-1]; // returns PSCP72R2.indd

Here I assume the following rule:

The first chunk before the first occurance of "_" should always be added to the last chunk that begins after the last occurance of  "_" in the name.

To make that work for all names you need at least two occurences of "_".

Regards,
UWe

So you have a INDD document name like:

PSCP72_MIRRORS_PRES_R2.indd

And you want it to shorten to:

PSCP72R2.indd

Right?

Regards,
Uwe

Thank you thank you thank. This worked great!

For anyone else wanted the script I've copied it below:

#targetengine "session" 

main(); 

//Will add a custom idleTask listener to count current document words  

function main() 

{ 

    var myIdleTask = app.idleTasks.item("countWords"); 

    if ( !myIdleTask.isValid ) { 

        myIdleTask = app.idleTasks.add({name:"countWords", sleep:100}); 

        var onIdleEventListener = myIdleTask.addEventListener(IdleEvent.ON_IDLE,  onIdleEventHandler, false); 

    } 

} 

//Idke task listener 

function onIdleEventHandler(myIdleEvent) 

{ 

    var doc = app.properties.activeDocument, 

    tv; 

    if ( !doc ) return; 

    tv = doc.textVariables.item("jobCode"); 

    !tv.isValid && tv = doc.textVariables.add({name:"countText", variableType:VariableTypes.CUSTOM_TEXT_TYPE}); 

var truncatedName = doc.name.match(/^.{7}/)[0];     

    tv.variableOptions.contents =  truncatedName;

} 

//Snippet from indiscripts.com = http://www.indiscripts.com/post/2011/09/what-exactly-is-a-word 

//with minor modification to exclude textVariable instances.;