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Yes. But the list is too long to put in a message here. Generally tools which do things that I needed done at the time, like convert PDF bank statements into CS
by ChuckMcM 2y ago
Yes. But the list is too long to put in a message here. Generally tools which do things that I needed done at the time, like convert PDF bank statements into CSV transaction files that can be ingested by a simple ledger application.
I always have a 'hacks' directory in my home directory of code that does something I need doing. Sometimes I use it again and again, sometimes its a one-off that answers a question.
I'm more curious though about the motivation of the question. What was the observation that got you to wonder about this?
- emilburzo 2y ago> like convert PDF bank statements into CSV transaction files I've tried this recently and it's surprisingly difficult. Any pro-tips? Extracting pdf tables, while respecting the cell position, seems almost impossible in a way that works in all cases (think borderless tables, whitespace cells, etc)
- ChuckMcM 2y agoIt is remarkably difficult and continues to provide a good example of the limitations of LLM based systems. In my case, I used perl, and exploited the fact for for a given bank, the statements are consistently formatted. Further, PDF OCR conversion responds consistently to the documents with the same formatting. With this combination, it is possible to extract the characters and numbers that are associated with transactions from the document, and then to take those extracted bundles of text and transform them into lines for a CSV file. The caveat is that it works for only that bank, that "kind" of account (usually checking, credit card, or savings), and when using that specific document OCR tool. Within those constraints it is eminently reliable but utterly non-transferable to a general case.