Re: Data table text I/O package?

[Georg Bauhaus <bauhaus@futureapps.de>]

Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 13:19:44 +0200, Georg Bauhaus wrote:
> 
> 
>>Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
>>
>>
>>>   Get (Line, Pointer, Field_2); -- Get field and move Pointer
>>>   ...
>>>   etc
>>>
>>>Quite trivial.
>>
>>And quite adventurous in any but an internal context.

If you are parsing data from outside, you have to know
the quality and structure of data (plus the pitfalls mentioned
by Robert Duff.) As to quality, just one inadvertently typed
space might be hazardous when it splits an atom in two... :)

(Think of a medium quality CSV file, and a number typed 3.1 5.
Oops!)

XML can help with this for example by identifying the bounds
of a data item, even if mistyped:
 <Distance km='3.1 5'/>
This will be noticed by the XML parser if it knows about km's
type (NMTOKEN). You could as well squeeze the space out using
either Ada.Strings or XML related technology. But in any case
there can be no doubt that the string "3.1 5" is a mistyped
number.


Georg