Unit Conversion Plugin

[Jared Howard]

Hello,

I am new to plugin development and wanted to ask if anyone has developed a metric to imperial or imperial to metric plugin for use with notepad++?

I need to convert mass amounts of data and would like to be able to alt + shift select a group of values and activate the plugin to convert.

If nobody has developed this, any tips or tricks is appreciated.

Thanks

[dail]

None exist that I’m aware of. This sounds like a fairly straight forward plugin. Your best bet is to install the Python Script plugin and you can write your plugin in Python. It would probably end up being < 50 lines of code. You could also use C/C++ or C# or something but the work involved in that for what you are doing probably isn’t worth it.

[Claudia Frank]

Hello Jared-Howard,

if you are looking for a python solution it might look like this

editor.beginUndoAction()

def conv_mile_kilometers(miles):  
    km = int(miles) / 1.6
    return km

for i in range(editor.getSelections()):
    start = editor.getSelectionNStart(i)
    end = editor.getSelectionNEnd(i)
    word = editor.getTextRange(start,end)
    editor.setTarget(start, end)
    editor.replaceTarget('{0}'.format(conv_mile_kilometers(word)))    
    
editor.endUndoAction()

Just be aware that you select numbers only as I didn’t do any error checking.
What needs to be done first is described here.
Cheers
Claudia

[Jared Howard]

Thank you both, I will play around with it and see if I can get it to work.

[Jared Howard]

I was able to get it to work, however is there a command so that the selection will include decimal values?

For example when I run the script it will convert “25” but not “25.4”

Thanks again

[Claudia Frank]

just change

km = int(miles) / 1.6

to

km = float(miles) / 1.6

Cheers
Claudia

[Jared Howard]

Excellent, has been working nicely so thank you for the help!

One last thing, is there a way to get the script to work when selecting multiple values when they are separated by a comma?

Example

25.4, 50.8,

[Claudia Frank]

Yes, splitting a line is easy but depends on what is assumed as input.
Let’s say you have a line like

25.4, 50.8, ...

or lines like

25.4, 50.8, ...
27.4, 54.8, ...

or

25,4, 50,8, ...

from scripts point of view either one could break the logic, even in the way how you select the values.
So question is what is/are your preferred way(s)? Depending on that we should be able to find a solution.

Cheers
Claudia

[Jared Howard]

Lines are typically separated by a space, however can vary as to if they have a decimal point or not. They will most likely always be a variation of the below.

2.99, 10,
3.98, 9,

0.25, 0.39,
0.25, 0.39,

[Claudia Frank]

Can I safely assume that you always use ALT+SHIFT to select the values?
This is critical because selecting with ALT+SHIFT and arrow right etc. results (taking your example) in

Selection:0 Values:2.99, 10,
Selection:1 Values:3.98, 9,
Selection:2 Values:
Selection:3 Values:0.25, 0.39,
Selection:4 Values:0.25, 0.39,

whereas using CTRL+ALT would result in

Selection:0 Values:2.99, 10,
3.98, 9,

0.25, 0.39,
0.25, 0.39,

As you see, the first would report 5 selections, each line as one selection where as
the second reports one selection for all 5 lines.

If using ALT+SHIFT we need to check if line has valid values (empty lines issue),
then split by comma, do conversion for each value and rebuild string.
Should we go this way?

Cheers
Claudia

[Jared Howard]

Correct, I always use ALT+SHIFT for selection. Your proposal sounds like the correct way to proceed.

Thank you again for your assistance. I am more versed in Pascal and am not very fluent yet with Python.

[Claudia Frank]

Hi,

I did some tests(empty line, just a comma, double comma) and I guess this should do the trick

editor.beginUndoAction()

def conv_mile_kilometers(miles):  
    list_of_values = miles.split(',')
    km = ''
    for value in list_of_values:
        if len(value) > 0 and value.isspace != True:
            km += str(float(value) / 1.6) + ','
    return km

for i in range(editor.getSelections()):
    start = editor.getSelectionNStart(i)
    end = editor.getSelectionNEnd(i)
    word = editor.getTextRange(start,end)
    if len(word) > 0 and word.isspace != True:
        editor.setTarget(start, end)
        editor.replaceTarget('{0}'.format(conv_mile_kilometers(word)))    
    
editor.endUndoAction() 

Cheers
Claudia

[Claudia Frank]

Correction:-(

Unfortunattely I cannot edit my post so

both isspace items need to be changed to isspace()
because they are functions.

Full code

editor.beginUndoAction()

def conv_mile_kilometers(miles):  
    list_of_values = miles.split(',')
    km = ''
    for value in list_of_values:
        if len(value) > 0 and value.isspace() != True:
            km += str(float(value) / 1.6) + ','
    return km

for i in range(editor.getSelections()):
    start = editor.getSelectionNStart(i)
    end = editor.getSelectionNEnd(i)
    word = editor.getTextRange(start,end)
    if len(word) > 0 and word.isspace() != True:
        editor.setTarget(start, end)
        editor.replaceTarget('{0}'.format(conv_mile_kilometers(word)))    
    
editor.endUndoAction() 

Cheers
Claudia

[Jared Howard]

Excellent it works great, thank you!

The last question I have regarding this is how do I format the number of decimals that the values get returned as when converted?

[Claudia Frank]

Hello Jared,

I’m sorry I don’t understand your question could you gimme an example
of what you want to do?

Thanks
Claudia

[Jared Howard]

Sorry I see my wording was not clear.

Once I convert say millimeters to inches is there a way to control the number of decimal places?

1.33 inches converted to metric is = 33.782

I want the value to only display 2 decimal places, 33.78. How is that accomplished?

Thanks again!

[Claudia Frank]

Hello,
this can be done using format’s strength.
Within the try block we need to change the following line

km += str(float(value) / 1.6) + ','

to

km += '{0:.2f},'.format(float(value) / 1.6)

Short explanation, the placeholder {0} receives the result from the
calculation float(value) / 1.6.
By specifying the colon after the zero, the format function gets informed
that the result needs to be reformatted.
The dot after the colon defines precision formatting,
the number 2 specifies only 2 decimal places and the letter f is to inform that it is
a float which needs to be formatted.

But we can go one step further, if you are interested in keep the number of
decimal places of the input and the output value the same then
we can replace the km += … line with the following two lines.

decimal_places = str(value)[::-1].find('.')
km += '{0:.{1}f},'.format((float(value) / 1.6),decimal_places)

as you see, the 2 is now replaced with another placeholder{1} which
get the value of decimal_places variable, which itself gets the value
from a stringified value where we search for the dot from right to left (that is what the -1 stands for).

Cheers
Claudia

[Jared Howard]

Outstanding!