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Strip

Function: Strip​

This action helps you clean up text by removing any of a specified set of characters from both the beginning and the end of a larger piece of text. It's useful for tidying up data, removing unwanted leading or trailing symbols, or standardizing text formats.

Input​

  • Text: The main piece of text you want to modify. (Type: Text, Required)
  • To strip: The specific characters you want to remove from the beginning and end of the main text. For example, if you enter abc, any 'a', 'b', or 'c' found at the start or end of the text will be removed. (Type: Text, Required)

Output​

  • Result: The name of the variable where the cleaned-up text will be stored. By default, this will be stored in a variable named RESULT. (Type: Text)

Execution Flow​

Real-Life Examples​

Example 1: Cleaning up product codes with delimiters Imagine you have product codes that sometimes come with extra characters like hyphens, underscores, or spaces at the beginning or end, and you want to standardize them.

  • Inputs:
    • Text: ---Product_XYZ---
    • To strip: - _ (hyphen, space, underscore)
    • Result: CleanedProductCode
  • Result: The variable CleanedProductCode will contain Product_XYZ. The hyphens, spaces, and underscores from the To strip set were removed from both ends of the original text.

Example 2: Removing quotation marks and spaces from text You have text data that might be enclosed in single or double quotation marks, or have extra spaces, and you want to remove them for consistency.

  • Inputs:
    • Text: "Hello World!"
    • To strip: "' (double quote, single quote, space)
    • Result: CleanedPhrase
  • Result: The variable CleanedPhrase will contain Hello World!. The leading/trailing spaces and double quotes were removed.

Example 3: Standardizing file names by removing leading/trailing numbers and symbols You're processing file names that might have leading/trailing numbers or special characters you want to remove to get to the core name.

  • Inputs:
    • Text: 123_MyDocument.pdf_456
    • To strip: 0123456789_ (all digits and underscore)
    • Result: StandardFileName
  • Result: The variable StandardFileName will contain MyDocument.pdf. The leading 123_ and trailing _456 were removed because their characters were present in the To strip set.