Decoding GS1-128 packed data into separate AIs

[antoineL]

Hi. Newbie user of PowerQuery, so please excuse me is there is an obvious answer in the documentation, which I did not fully read before asking.

GS1-128 is a barcode encoding where the data are strings of characters prefixed with a 2-digit application identifier (AI), strings which are then concanated.

I got readings from a barcode scanners which are packed, i.e. the example from the wikipedia page would show as

00123456780000000001
2112345 1109010117100101
11090101171001012112345

(let's ignore for a moment 4-digit AIs, or the encoding of [FNC1] since I cannot write "character" GS on the board.)

I would like to transform those readings into a number of columns, one for each AI.

I believe it should be possible to extract several columns in M.

But what I am not easy with is to "consume" the input and how to "slice" it.

In traditional programming languages, it would use an index/pointer initialised to the begining of the string, a do{}until(end-of-string) loop and a select/case based on next two characters then advance pointer. But I do not know how to translate that logic into M...

[v-yingjl]

Hi @antoineL ,

If all fields in the coumn have the same length and format, you can use split columns in power query directly, please refer:

1. Split columns by number of characters 
2. How to Split Columns in Power BI 

If not, I think need to group them first which have the same length and format and then use split columns by number of characters.

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Yingjie Li
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[AlB]

Hi @antoineL 

Please show clearly the initial data and the expected result

Share it in text-tabular format so that the contents can be copied

Please accept the solution when done and consider giving a thumbs up if posts are helpful.  Contact me privately for support with any larger-scale BI needs, tutoring, etc. Cheers