Pitney Bowes MapXtreme - Manual (Page 269)

Chapter 13: Finding Locations
Fine Tuning the Find Process
MapXtreme v7.1 276 Developer Guide
Legitimate Spaces
There are cases where you want to indicate a substitution in which the searched for string contains
spaces. You can use double quotes in such cases. Place a double quote:
• at the beginning of the line; and
• between the searched for string and the substitution; and
• at the end of the line.
For example, you might want to substitute “STHWY” for “State Highway”. To do that, use the
following line:
"State Highway"STHWY"
This provides a solution to a subtle problem, that of street names which match items in the
abbreviation file. For example, “North St” and “Park Av” both have initial strings which match terms in
the abbreviation file. Consequently, MapXtreme will substitute “N” for “North” to yield “N St” and “Pk”
for “Park” to yield “Pk Av.” You could add the following lines to the Abbreviation file to rectify these
substitutions:
"N ST"North ST"
"PK AV"PARK AV"
Note that these lines have to come after the entries which substitute “N” for “North” and “PK” for
“Park”. If they came before, they would have no effect. Thus:
...
...
NORTH
N
...
...
PARK
PK
..
....
"N ST"NORTH ST"
"PK AV"PARK AV"
...
...
When MapXtreme encounters NORTH N it will turn NORTH ST into N ST. When it encounters “N
ST”NORTH ST” it will then turn N ST into NORTH ST. PARK AV is treated similarly.
Special Characters
MapXtreme uses the exclamation point (!), the double quote (") and the backslash (\) as special
characters. These characters tell MapXtreme how to treat strings which follow them, but are not
themselves ordinarily treated as characters in substitution strings. The exclamation point tells
MapXtreme that the string should not be interpreted as an abbreviation. The double quote tells
MapXtreme that spaces in the string are legitimate. And the backslash tells MapXtreme to treat a
special character as an ordinary character.
When you want to use any of these in a line where they are to be treated as simple characters,
precede them by a backslash. Thus:
\!