Hi robdog,

Although I can't say I am perfectly clear on your specific requirements, this sounds at least roughly like a case where using a spreadsheet (ie MSFT Excel or OpenOffice Calc) would simplify your work.

A spreadsheet makes it easy to: do mass changes; validate for valid integer, string, or other formatted data; process statistical metadata; sort and so forth. In other words it has most of the wheels that one would want to avoid re-inventing. (Unless part of the excercise is the enjoyment of do-it-yourself, which is a valid consideration).

the hard part

The main problem, of course, is how to map arbitrary text files of any arbitrary syntax format into the neatly-arranged cells of a spreadsheet, and then *back* out to the arbitrary text files, once you are done 'munging' them in the spreadsheet. I've written some apps that allow me to 'munge' multiple text files into and out of Excel, but it is pretty specific to my own work.

I could not gather from your post: what language you are coding in; how you are persisting your objects; and whether you are directly manipulating text files. Therefore, your approach may be dissimilar from what I have done using spreadsheets.

Nonetheless, this general type of problem solving seems like a productive path to consider, as it does simplify many tasks. Therefore I'd be interested in whatever you're able to find that addresses your needs.