Re: Parsing a text file format

From:
Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.net>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Tue, 19 Jun 2007 15:34:58 GMT
Message-ID:
<CISdi.7543$u65.7273@trndny07>
On Tue, 19 Jun 2007 08:18:32 -0700, JR wrote:

I am trying to figure out the code to read in the structure of a text
file to parse it. The way it works is the first block is the layout,
then the rest has the data so:


public class TextFileExample {
static String[] readColumns(BufferedReader in) {
    LinkedList<String> columns = new LinkedList<String>();
    String s;
    while (!(s = in.readLine()).equals("~~~~~~")) {
        columns.add(s);
    }
    return columns.toArray(new String[0]);
}
static String[] readRecord(BufferedReader in, String[] columns) {
    String[] record = new String[columns.length];
    for (int i=0;i<columns.length;i++) {
        record[i] = in.readLine();
        record[i] = record[i].substring(record[i].indexOf('=')+1);
    }
    return record;
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{
    BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("test.txt"));
    String[] header = readColumns(in);
    String s;
    do {
        String[] record = readRecord(in, header);
        for (String key : record)
            System.out.println(key);
        System.out.println("------");
    } while ((s = in.readLine()) != null);
}
}

This is not very good code (it assumes that at least one record exists),
but it should give you a starting point.

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