The Parse Tool palette offers parsing options that will save you time by having the tools that do it all for you, such as the Text to Columns tool, which allows you to split text from one field into multiple columns or rows. Don't forget the numerous times a file comes in with a string formatted field when it should be a date formatted field. This complexity is all solved by utilizing the DateTime tool. The opportunities for parsing are limitless with regular expressions, where you will dive into more advanced features of parsing your data.
This chapter will cover the following topics:
- Text to columns
- Converting string to dates and dates to strings
- Regular expressions