Taxacom: Rather an informaticy question about botanical names

[Tony Rees]

Hi Mary,

I took a look at the spreadsheet you supplied. In the first scientific name
listed i.e. "Acorus calamus L." it seems there is a regular space between
the genus name and the species epithet, but a special character
(non-breaking space, Unicode a0, apparently also designatable as U+00A0)
before the authority; in addition, the name is presented as a hyperlink (in
this case, https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ipni.org%2Fa%2F12653-1&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C798274381e844f8a0c9108da86072750%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637969662526366839%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=DiOwW22011mfIv7olvyeB8F%2Fghw09NRoHU934xgllIY%3D&reserved=0) but that goes to an IPNI page
for the author, not the name, which is a bit weird...

Anyway, as you have discovered, you can remove the hyperlinks by copying
the column, then pasting (either back where it came from, or to a new
column) via "paste special" > values.

Then you can remove the non breaking spaces by selecting one, copying it
into the "find" section of "find/replace", with a regular space in the
"replace with" portion", and applying either just to that column, or the
entire document (the latter might be a good idea but probably will not find
anything else).

Then (preferably operating on a copy of the column), use "data" > "text to
columns" > "delimited" > "delimiter = space" to split the column into
multiple ones, the genus and species will then appear in the first and
second ones, the authority will be further split depending on its
complexity but can be reassembled via other methods if needed.

There may be a way to do all the above via either an Excel function or a
VBA macro but I am not sufficiently familiar with these to offer those
solutions, though maybe others can...

Hope this helps. I am not sure how the IPNI export was generated but if
this is a feature, then others might find the above explanation/potential
operations helpful as well.

Feel free to message me further if you want my "treated" copy of the file,
or report back to this list if you are able or not able to replicate these
operations (or based on that information, can come up with a more
elegant/efficient method).

Regards - Tony

Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.me%2FTonyRees&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C798274381e844f8a0c9108da86072750%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637969662526366839%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=8631lHUUjSAF1kwzZsu%2BpzfIh6HwPVA51hBEri%2BJgEw%3D&reserved=0


On Wed, 24 Aug 2022 at 13:54, Mary Barkworth via Taxacom <
taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:

> A student has sent me a spreadsheet for uploading. One column is of names.
> He had them all linked to IPNI and they include the authors of the name. I
> need to strip the authors off. They are all at species rank, meaning I just
> need the first two words. Using Excel, I have removed the hyperlinks. Then
> I try to use the formula =TRIM(LEFT(d2, FIND("^",SUBSTITUTE(d2, " ",
> "^",2)&"^"))) to generate the pure binomial. It does not work. It does work
> if I manually delete the space between the name and the authors and then
> enter a space. Apparently, there is a hidden character linking the name to
> the authors.
>
> Here are a few of the entries that I am trying to fix.
> Arisaema jacquemontii Blume,
> Arisaema jacquemontii Blume,
> Arisaema jacquemontii Blume,
> Arisaema utile Hook.
> Arisaema utile Hook.
>
> Could someone help please? I tried exporting to a csv file, opening it in
> Notepad++ and then reexporting to Excel, but it did not work.
>
> Mary
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