in reply to Manipulating Text File in Perl

I started drafting a code according to your specification as a programming exercise, but in doing so I discovered a few pecularities regarding your specification:

  1. (How) does your specification accomodate for varying coordinates?
  2. It is impossible to determine the magnitude of the original coordinate and artificial granularity may be introduced if only the first 8 digits are used:

    10000001 # 100.00001 99999999 # 99.999999 10000001 # 10.000001 99999999 # 9.9999999 10000001 # 1.0000001 99999999 # 0.99999999 10000001 # 0.10000001 99999999 # 0.099999999 ...

    A fixed reference is necessary to determine the respective magnitude:

    10000001 # 100.00001 09999999 # 99.999999 01000000 # 10.000001 00999999 # 9.9999999 00100000 # 1.0000001 00099999 # 0.99999999 00010000 # 0.10000001 00009999 # 0.099999999 ...

  3. Should coordinates be truncated or rounded?

    Given a coordinate like 256.123456, the difference between 256.12346 and 256.12345 could be significant, but I guess that depends on the size of the planet in question.

  4. What is the significance of the first two fields of the specification?

    Do they correspond to what I presume to be "device numbers" (or similar) in the log, eg: Generic Scanner PN Measurement DtiC(0)? If so, is there a particular order in the syntax (eg arbitrarily stipulated, alphabetical)?