How to fix the dates format when output contains some other numbers in it?

[sachinbhardwaj]

Lets suppose correct data formats are 01/01/2020 or 1/1/2020 or 01/1/2020 or 1/01/2020.

So whats happening, i am receiving dates in this format sometimes 01701/2020 so here slash (/) changes into 7, so i want to fix this issue. So that even if slash becomes something else, it can skip 7 and gives me the exact date.

Please assume second slash can also change like first.

[Matt_S]

Interesting. Is there always supposed to be 3 slashes? Is the 7 sometimes found as the second slash? Is the 7 always associated with a date that has January in it?

I can see an issue when it is July or the 7th of the month so if some more assumptions can be made-then easier to check for error.

You could count the slashes and when less than 3, then look for the error.

Is the data coming from a scrape or OCR activity? If so have you considered scraping the data and checking for the error and if error found, try using another scrape using a different scale.

[sachinbhardwaj]

Yes actually data is coming from OCR, i already check the scale part. And its not about 7, slash can be anything -sometimes it comes as 1- and also its not about july month.

Slashes are always there, only thing we have to check we have something in place of slash, bot can remove that.

Dates Format: mm/dd/yyyy, m/d/yyyy, m/dd/yyyy, mm/d/yyyy. Can you provide some logic for that, that can be great help.

[Matt_S]

Yikes. Is there another way to validate the date data other than scraping? Like a data export some how?

Other than that here is the logic I thought about:
when date has three slashes you should have a valid date
when date has length 10 you should have a valid date just ignore the chars where the slashes should be.
when date has length 8 you should have a valid date just ignore the chars where the slashes should be
when date has 9 digits and first digit is 0 then you know locations of slashes
when date has 9 digits and first digit is not zero this is the tricky part as issues with 1/11 and 11/1.

Is this an attended robot? perhaps you could insert step to ask for user input when the last condition is met to manually verify the dates.

[sachinbhardwaj]

Thankyou matt for the inputs.

No its not attended robot, and also scraping is the only method.
I am also thinking about the same logic, Let me try this.

Also if you will get to know something else. let me know. Thankyou for your help.