Often we have a situation were we want to create a dimension with the contents of a code from a source system. Sometimes, however the IDs in the source system are of a variable length and we want to present them uniformly. To overcome this, we need to pad the code at the left with a constant character to make them all the same length. the method below will pad out the left side of the ID with zeroes in this instance (probably what you want to use if the original IDs are numeric).
Method to Pad a String with Zeros
Firstly, convert the number to a string using NumberToString() function in TI. This will convert the number 10 to string “10”.
Second, use the LONG function to get the length of the string. This will return you length of 2 for the string “10”.
Finally, use the IF condition to append zeros before the string per the following code:
IF (LEN(vString) = 1);
vString = "0000" | vString;
ELSEIF (LEN(vString) = 2);
vString = "000" | vString;
ELSEIF (LEN(vString) = 3);
vString = "000" | vString;
ELSEIF (LEN(vString) = 4);
vString = "00" | vString;
ELSEIF (LEN(vString) = 5);
vString = "0" | vString;
ENDIF;Usage
Typically we would use this when we are updating a dimension. Often it would be combined with a DimensionElementInsert to insert the element into the dimension and DimensionSortOrder to then get the elements in the dimension into the correct order (obviously after the padding has been done!).
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