I have added a new field ('Source') to one of my Termbases by editing the definition (within Multiterm). I've been trying to no avail to populate this new field with the same value across the whole Termbase. I believe it should be very simple to replace an empty field with some content using search and replace, but I wish someone give me a hand here. For this, I went to "Batch edit Script" and tried, many times, different forms of syntax for the Regex pattern. The only syntax that seems to be working is ^(.*)$ although I tried ^(s*)$ as well. BUT since I had four entries already edited manually, the script went through the whole Termbase and at the end it said "4 entries edited". Then I realized that the script did nothing. Next thing I did was to delete the manual entries, thinking that my newly created field had to be completely empty throughout, but the script did nothing at all again. In other words, I have accomplished nothing after spending an inordinate amount of time. Any help is really appreciated. Thanks.

Do you want to have exactly the same value in this field? If so, export the TB to XML using the default export definition. Save the termbase definition (XDT). Open the exported XML, locate the tag pair for the corresponding field, copy those, enter them into the search field, then put them separated by the desired value in the replace field. Replace all occurrences. Save the XML under new name. Create a new TB with the XDT and import this modified XML. This way all entries should have the desired field with the desired value.

Hello Ozzie, I can confirm that it's not possible to do this with the Batch Edit as the whole routine is based around actually finding something to replace. I have escalated for discussion, so you might want to log an idea for this in the meantime (if you haven't already): community.sdl.com/.../ The best solution I think, would be to use the Glossary Converter as it would be a simple one operation to get the spreadsheet, then copy the value you want into the new field (also trivial), and finally one operation to convert back to your termbase. I think this would work for anything but the most complex of termbases. So if you had URL values in the fields anywhere then this would not work and you'd need to use MultiTerm Convert in the process for the upgrade. Regards Paul

What is the correct Regex syntax to find an "empty string" (i.e. empty field) in Multiterm?

Former Member over 7 years ago

I have added a new field ('Source') to one of my Termbases by editing the definition (within Multiterm). I've been trying to no avail to populate this new field with the same value across the whole Termbase. I believe it should be very simple to replace an empty field with some content using search and replace, but I wish someone give me a hand here.
For this, I went to "Batch edit Script" and tried, many times, different forms of syntax for the Regex pattern. The only syntax that seems to be working is ^(.*)$ although I tried ^(s*)$ as well.
BUT since I had four entries already edited manually, the script went through the whole Termbase and at the end it said "4 entries edited". Then I realized that the script did nothing.
Next thing I did was to delete the manual entries, thinking that my newly created field had to be completely empty throughout, but the script did nothing at all again.

In other words, I have accomplished nothing after spending an inordinate amount of time. Any help is really appreciated. Thanks.

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0 Jerzy Czopik over 7 years ago

Do you want to have exactly the same value in this field?
If so, export the TB to XML using the default export definition. Save the termbase definition (XDT).
Open the exported XML, locate the tag pair for the corresponding field, copy those, enter them into the search field, then put them separated by the desired value in the replace field. Replace all occurrences. Save the XML under new name. Create a new TB with the XDT and import this modified XML. This way all entries should have the desired field with the desired value.
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0 Jerzy Czopik over 7 years ago in reply to Jerzy Czopik

BTW, an "empty" string should be just ^$ - assuming the position at the beginning of the string, finding nothing and assuming the position at the end of the string. In your regex ^(.*)$ the brackets are superfluous. Regarding to Regex Buddy all proposals (mine and yours) may find zero length matches. The regex ^(s*)$ finds JUST the "s" literally, so I think you meant \s - and this regex matches then also zero length strings.
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0 Former Member over 7 years ago in reply to Jerzy Czopik

Jerzy, thanks for the tip, using the XDT. However, I'm trying to avoid exporting, importing, converting, etc. I hope the SDL team provides some Multiterm batch edit scripts (*.sldmt.batchedit), among them, one that uses regular expressions. The regex patterns you suggested did not work either. Cheers!
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0 Paul over 7 years ago in reply to Former Member

Hello Ozzie,

I can confirm that it's not possible to do this with the Batch Edit as the whole routine is based around actually finding something to replace. I have escalated for discussion, so you might want to log an idea for this in the meantime (if you haven't already):

community.sdl.com/.../

The best solution I think, would be to use the Glossary Converter as it would be a simple one operation to get the spreadsheet, then copy the value you want into the new field (also trivial), and finally one operation to convert back to your termbase. I think this would work for anything but the most complex of termbases. So if you had URL values in the fields anywhere then this would not work and you'd need to use MultiTerm Convert in the process for the upgrade.

Regards

Paul

Paul Filkin | RWS Group

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0 Paul over 7 years ago in reply to Former Member

Hello Ozzie,

I can confirm that it's not possible to do this with the Batch Edit as the whole routine is based around actually finding something to replace. I have escalated for discussion, so you might want to log an idea for this in the meantime (if you haven't already):

community.sdl.com/.../

The best solution I think, would be to use the Glossary Converter as it would be a simple one operation to get the spreadsheet, then copy the value you want into the new field (also trivial), and finally one operation to convert back to your termbase. I think this would work for anything but the most complex of termbases. So if you had URL values in the fields anywhere then this would not work and you'd need to use MultiTerm Convert in the process for the upgrade.

Regards

Paul

Paul Filkin | RWS Group

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0 Hayley over 5 years ago in reply to Paul

Hello Paul and ,

I came across this Q&A because I'm trying to do the same thing as the original poster: use Batch Edit to add a value to an empty field in my TB. As far as I can tell, this is still not possible (the original post is from Feb 2017, so I thought it worth checking!)

In my case, I only want to add my new field to entries created after a certain date. I was able to create a filter for this purpose and then select this filter in the Batch Edit window, but like the previous poster, I then got stuck at the 'find empty fields' stage.

Re. your suggestion to use Glossary Converter, I can see how this would work, but the Excel file generated by Glossary Converter doesn't seem to contain the default MultiTerm fields such as "Created on" that would allow me to identify the terms I want to edit. Is this a setting that can be changed?

Thanks!
Hayley
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0 Aurore Alessandra over 5 years ago in reply to Paul

Hi Paul! I'm confused on how to use Glossary Converter here. In the 2017 and 2019 versions, you cannot chose the output format, it's only xml that is offered, so I don't understand how to use Glossary Converter to obtain the spreadsheet of the base. Could you further explain?

I'm truly baffled that such a simple task requires such a work-around. How come the batch task options are so basics on Multiterm?
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0 Paul over 5 years ago in reply to Aurore Alessandra

Unknown said:
Hi Paul! I'm confused on how to use Glossary Converter here. In the 2017 and 2019 versions, you cannot chose the output format, it's only xml that is offered, so I don't understand how to use Glossary Converter to obtain the spreadsheet of the base. Could you further explain?

Hello Aurore Alessandra

Unfortunately this is due to a problem that has been caused in the last updates to Studio. The Studio team and the Glossary Converter developer have been struggling to find the problem as it doesn't seem to affect everyone. But perhaps these will help you:

https://community.sdl.com/product-groups/translationproductivity/f/160/p/20996/72934#72934

https://community.sdl.com/product-groups/translationproductivity/f/160/p/20912/73130#73130

Once the teams have figured out why it broke there will be a fix issues quite quickly.

Unknown said:
I'm truly baffled that such a simple task requires such a work-around. How come the batch task options are so basics on Multiterm?

Even the batch tasks are quite new to MultiTerm. Many of the tasks serious terminologists like to carry out go well beyojnd the capabilities of Multiterm or the Glossary Converter and the tool of choice tends to be this one:

https://appstore.sdl.com/language/app/excelling-multiterm/6/

So there has always been a gap between providing a solution for the few who need it versus other things that many more users were after. Most users don't need this kind of capability so the business case for delivering it has never been there. That would be my take on it anyway.

Paul Filkin | RWS Group

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0 Aurore Alessandra over 5 years ago in reply to Paul

Thanks. I really can't wait for Multiterm to be more efficient! I had to reinstall Multiterm 2015 (sigh) in order to use Glossary Converter 2015 and be able to get my termbase in a proper excel format.
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Trados Studio > 6. Regex and XPath

What is the correct Regex syntax to find an "empty string" (i.e. empty field) in Multiterm?