Strings cut

The Strings cut step returns a snippet of an input string based on a range of character locations.

For example, you may need to parse the time 11:00 out of a file name such as 11:00 am update by returning the substring starting at index 0 and ending before index 5.

If you specify locations outside the length of the input string, Strings cut returns an empty string.

Step name

• Step name: Specify the unique name of the Strings cut step on the canvas. You can customize the name or leave it as the default.

Fields to cut

Use the Fields to cut table to specify what to cut and where to cut it.

Column	Description
In stream field	Name of the field containing the string to cut. Select Get fields to populate the table from the incoming stream.
Out stream field	(Optional) A new output field containing the substring result. If you do not specify a value, the step replaces In stream field.
Cut from	Starting character location (zero-based). The first character has index 0.
Cut to	Character location after the ending point (zero-based, exclusive). For example, setting Cut to to 1 returns the first character.

The maximum length of the resulting string is Cut to minus Cut from.

Example

Given the string example, the character indexes are:

Character	e	x	a	m	p	l	e
Index	0	1	2	3	4	5	6

To return the first letter e, set Cut from to 0 and Cut to to 1.

To return am, set Cut from to 2 and Cut to to 4.

Metadata injection support

This step supports metadata injection. You can use it with ETL metadata injection to pass metadata to your transformation at runtime.