Easy Data Transform v1.20.0 released
Easy Data Transform v1.20.0 is now available for Windows and Mac. Improvements include:
- A new Hash transform
- A new New Rows transform
- Improvements to batch processing
- Performance improvements for reading large fixed width and plain text files
- Extra variables for the Stamp transform
- Find and replace in the Rename Cols transform
- Sort ascending/descending in the Reorder Cols transform
- Additional scroll buttons for the data table in the Right pane
Find out more and download the new release from the release page:
Download Easy Data Transform v1.20.0
This is a free upgrade for everyone with a valid license. If you don’t yet have a license, you can buy one here.
Thanks to everyone who sent us bug reports and suggestions for improvements. Is there something you would like to see improved in Easy Data Transform? A bug that needs fixing? Something that is too slow? A feature request? Let us know by replying to this email or on the forum.
Hashing
A hash maps any string to another string of a fixed length. Similar input strings produce very different outputs. E.g.:
The MD5 hash of “Hello” is:
8b1a9953c4611296a827abf8c47804d7
The MD5 hash of “hello” is:
5d41402abc4b2a76b9719d911017c592
Hashing is a one-way process. You can’t reverse it.
The chance of 2 different strings producing the same hash ( a ‘collision’) is infinitessimally small.
Hashing has various applications:
- verifying authenticity
- anonymizing data
- finding duplicates of large chunks of data (comparing the hashes)
- password storage (using a ‘salted’ hash)
You can see a useful 8 minute Tom Scott/Numberphile video on hashing if you click the image below:
Tidy Data
Tidy data has the form:
- each variable forms a column
- each observation forms a row
- each observational unit forms a table
We’ve written an article showing how you can use Easy Data Transform to convert ‘messy data’ into ‘tidy data’ to make it easier to analyze and use.
Recently shared
The following topics have been recently shared on the forum:
- How to import table data from Markdown
- Removing trailing hex nuls from character stream files
- Filtering on the current date
- Detecting ragged TSV files
Do you have anything useful to share?
And finally
From the XKCD cartoon:
Andy Brice
Oryx Digital Ltd
03-Aug-2021