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The same 'recipe' is the foundation for how we take our old database numbering style and make it Specify compatible. But first, we have to use the recipe for padding with 0's.
The recipe is: value +"0000"[0,4-value.length()] + value
The recipe says to take the value, add as many 0's as are needed to make the field have 4 values stored in it.
This This will add 4 0's to our value. If we need more, we increase the number of 0's to what we need, then change the number inside the brackets to match.
Specify expects to see 3 values for the Collection, 8 values for the specimen number, a decimal then 3 values for the suffix. Remember here that letters follow the .R00 format, and numbers .001.
Suffixes Suffixes like 'T6' would be set to .T06
To make the Collection have 3 digits, paste this expression into the Transform window for the Collection column-value
value +"000"[0,3-value.length()]
To make the Specimen number have 8 digits, paste this expression into the Transform window:
"0000000" value0[value0,8-value.length()]
Notice how the order has changed a little- the string of 0's is at the start, and the value is added to it. This gives us 0 padding in front of the number. For the Collection, we wanted the 0's to come at the end of the collection acronym so the expression structure was swapped around.
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