OpenEuphoria

2. Re: Newbie file/record handling Question #1

• Posted by David Cuny <dcuny at LANSET.COM> Jun 23, 1999
• 632 views
• Last edited Jun 24, 1999

Dave E. Edwards wrote:

>Hypothetically:  I have a file with a record that contains data as
>follows:
>
>FIELD1=aaaaa FIELD2=bbbbb FIELD4=dddddddddd FIELD5=ccc

From your description, each record takes the form:

   <record> = <fields>
   <fields> = <field> [ <space> <fields> ]
   <field> = <name> '=' <value>

From your description, it would seem that each field is delimited by a
single space. So a routine that would return a list of fields would be:

   function getFields( sequence record )

      -- return a sequence of space delimited fields

      integer spaceAt

      -- look for a space
      spaceAt = find( ' ', record )

      -- no space?
      if spaceAt = 0 then
         -- this is the last field
         return {record}

      else
         -- get the record, and recursively get the rest
         return {record[1..spaceAt-1]} &
etFields( record[spaceAt+1..length(record)] )

      end if

   end function

Knowing when to use & and append(), and where to put {} around things can be
confusing - I still had to test my code out to make sure I was getting the
right results. So input of:

   getFields( ''123 456 789'' )

will return:

   { ''123'', ''456'', ''789'' }

Please excuse the use of two single quotes instead of a real quote mark -
the quote key on this keyboard is broken. Now, the probem is to split the
records into names and values. Good thing there's an '=' to look for:

   function splitField( sequence field )

      integer equalAt

      equalAt = find( '=', field )
      return { field[1..equalAt-1], field[equalAt+1..length(field)] }

   end function

So:

   splitField( ''123=abc'' )

will produce:

 { ''123'', ''abc'' }

Here's a function that puts it all together:

   function parseLine( sequence line )

      sequence out

      -- parse line into field names and values

      -- parse the line into fields
      out = getFields( line )

      -- convert each field into the name and data
      for i = 1 to length( out ) do

         -- replace field with split elements
         out[ i ] = splitField( out[ i ] )

      end for

      return out

   end function

Did I answer the right question?

-- David Cuny