Multi-line OCR

When the text in an OCRClosed(Optical Character Recognition) - the process of recognizing printed characters by a software application. zone is on more than one line, the software will insert the caret character (^) between each line of data. The result is a delimited string of OCR text that can be broken up into separate index fields. For example:

                John Doe^55 Elm St.^Anywhere, USA^55555

As a result, the following could be used as default values for the four index fields of data:

Default Value Actual Value
<OCR_Address>[1; “^”] John Doe <OCR_Address:[1,'^']>
<OCR_Address>[2; “^”] 55 Elm St. <OCR_Address:[2,'^']>
<OCR_Address>[3; “^”] Anywhere, USA <OCR_Address:[3,'^']>
<OCR_Address>[4; “^”] 55555 <OCR_Address:[4,'^']>
OCR zone called  

Address

 
John Doe  
55 Elm St.  
Anywhere, USA  
55555  

 

Mask syntax

Following are mask syntax values and some examples of how to use them.

A

Strict alpha (no symbols such as: - _ ( ) + … are allowed).

9

Strict numeric (no symbols such as - _ ( ) + … are allowed).

X

Alpha and/or numeric (but no symbols such as - _ ( ) + … are allowed)

?

Anything (including special symbols and spaces).

D,M,Y

Date characters. The mask for a Julian date is YYDDD.

HH,hh,mm,ss,tt

HH = 24 hours, hh = 12 hours, mm = minutes, ss = seconds, tt = AM/PM

 

“FIXED TEXT”

Everything between double quotes is a fixed required value.

 

The A and X mask syntax characters can be lower- or uppercase. The date mask syntax characters (D,M,Y) must be uppercase.

Example

9(4) or 9999

for a four-character numeric field.

A(4) or AAAA

for a four-character alphabetic text field.

MMDDYY

for a six-character date field in month, day, year format.

999”-“ 99”-“ 9999

for a delimited Social Security Number.

 

If the index field value must exactly match the Input Mask, make sure that the Minimum Length specified is equal to the number of characters represented by the Input Mask.  For example, if the Input Mask is AA9(6), set the Minimum Length to 8.