# Formatting field values? Or how to write this particular script preprocessor?
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/formatting-field-values-or-how-to-write-this-particular-script-preprocessor/172045
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [March 13, 2019, 2:46am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/formatting-field-values-or-how-to-write-this-particular-script-preprocessor/172045 "2019-03-13T02:46:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Atonal](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Atonal)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2019, 2:46am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/formatting-field-values-or-how-to-write-this-particular-script-preprocessor/172045/1 "2019-03-13T02:46:58Z")
I have documents in my index that have a field whose value is a string of numbers, "." and `-`. I want to remove those `.` and `-` from the values and change the field type to an integer.
I can have these removed before I feed my data to elasticsearch, but then I still have the problem with the existing indexed documents.
I believe the solution is to define an ingest node and add it to the a new index's mapping, then reindex and alias the old one. However I simply can't write the conditional removal of `.` and `-` using painless in a script preprocessor! And I didn't understand the documentation.
How do I write it?!
Thanks!
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### Author:  [@Atonal](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Atonal)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2019, 7:11am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/formatting-field-values-or-how-to-write-this-particular-script-preprocessor/172045/2 "2019-03-13T07:11:28Z")
Anyone?
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2019, 7:11am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/formatting-field-values-or-how-to-write-this-particular-script-preprocessor/172045/3 "2019-04-10T07:11:32Z")
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