Return first item of multiple results from registry

Content Authoring
1

I’ve come across an issue where I am getting mulitple non-unique results for what I expected to be a single result. When I get multiple results I’d like to only take the first match. Here’s the relevance that can sometimes find multiple results:
values “installationLocation” of keys whose (value “installationLocation” of it as string as lowercase contains “tivoli”) of key “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall” of native registry

A: C:\Program Files\Tivoli\TSM
A: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Tivoli\TSM
etc…

When I get more than one result the fixlet using this relevance fails. When a single result is returned it works.

I’ve tried several things similar to what’s below:
tuple string item 0 of concatenation ", " of value “installationLocation” of keys whose (value “installationLocation” of it as string as lowercase contains “tivoli”) of key “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall” of native registry

Am I on the right track with tuple and concatenation?

2

Yes, you’re on the right track. You’ll have to cast the registry values ‘as string’ though to use the ‘concatenation’ operator:

q: concatenation ", " of values "InstallLocation" whose (it != "") of keys of keys "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall" of native registry
E: The operator "concatenation" is not defined.

q: concatenation ", " of (values "InstallLocation" whose (it != "") of keys of keys "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall" of native registry as string)
A: C:\Program Files\7-Zip\, C:\Program Files\Git\, C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office

q: tuple string item 0 of concatenation ", " of (values "InstallLocation" whose (it != "") of keys of keys "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall" of native registry as string)
A: C:\Program Files\7-Zip\
T: 10.715 ms
I: singular string

That’s how we did it before the ‘tuple string of’ inspector was added, in 9.5.3.

Now with 9.5.3 or higher, there is a safer version using the ‘tuple string of’ inspector. It creates a single tuple string given a group of plural results, and it handles escaping in case the results included embedded commas of their own. That probably won’t come up in this case, it’s unlikely that InstallLocation values will have embedded commas, but if you had other more general cases of wanting the first string of many it could be safer:

q: tuple string of (values "InstallLocation" whose (it != "") of keys of keys "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall" of native registry as string)
A: C:\Program Files\7-Zip\, C:\Program Files\Git\, C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office

q: tuple string item 0 of tuple string of (values "InstallLocation" whose (it != "") of keys of keys "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall" of native registry as string)
A: C:\Program Files\7-Zip\

Consider where the strings might have embedded commas of their own, breaking your expectation of ‘tuple string’ -

q: ("to be, or not to be, that is the question"; " -Shakespeare")
A: to be, or not to be, that is the question
A:  -Shakespeare
T: 0.369 ms
I: plural string

// manually concatenating doesn't consider the original strings had their own commas
q: concatenation ", " of ("to be, or not to be, that is the question"; " -Shakespeare")
A: to be, or not to be, that is the question,  -Shakespeare
T: 0.332 ms
I: singular string

// now we can't tell "our" concatenation from the original embedded commas
q: tuple string item 0 of concatenation ", " of ("to be, or not to be, that is the question"; " -Shakespeare")
A: to be
T: 0.244 ms
I: singular string

// `tuple string of` escapes the original commas by wrapping in parentheses
q: tuple string of ("to be, or not to be, that is the question"; " -Shakespeare")
A: ( to be, or not to be, that is the question ),  -Shakespeare
T: 0.149 ms
I: singular string

// tuple string item un-escapes the parentheses that were added by the 'tuple string of' escape
q: tuple string item 0 of tuple string of ("to be, or not to be, that is the question"; " -Shakespeare")
A: to be, or not to be, that is the question
T: 0.077 ms
I: singular string
1 Like
3

CORRECTED
Thank you very much for your help and the additional information. This is the final form that works for me:
tuple string item 0 of tuple string of (values “InstallLocation” whose (it as string as lowercase contains “tivoli”) of keys of keys “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall” of native registry as string)

Very much appreciate all your excellent content and help!

4

? I’m not sure that’s it? I don’t see creating a ‘tuple string of’ or a ‘concatenation ", " of’ in there…is this just one case where there’s only one match in the registry?

1 Like
5

Thanks Jason, I’ve edited the previous comment with the missing text: “tuple string of”. I copied the wrong one from my notes. :slight_smile:

1 Like