Re: delimited files

To expand further on what the prior responses are saying, a file's structure is determined by agreement between the person making the file and the person reading the file. As far as a computer is concerned, a file is just a stream of 1's and 0's. Nothing less, nothing more. It is you, the programmer, that imposes structure on that stream. If you do not know the structure, then it is up to you to discover it.

The best place to start is your manager. If the person giving you the task has not provided the information you need to complete said task, they need to be made aware of it ASAP.

In general, if you think something isn't in Perl, try it out, because it usually is. :-)
"What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against?"

Comment on Re: delimited files

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: delimited files by saldoman (Initiate) on May 18, 2005 at 13:23 UTC
I totally agree with you, but in this business that request will go unanswered. I was handed a project with a 48 hour TAT and the hard drive of the customers data. The hard drive consisted of 251 GB of data files. Some of these files are considered metadata files which are the delimited files I was describing earlier. With this much data to work there is no way to go through it manually to figure out the delimiters. This is actually somewhat humorous, I said to my manager that this project is nearly void of any meaningful details. His reponse was " You have to make your own details" Nice!	[reply]
Re^3: delimited files by dragonchild (Archbishop) on May 18, 2005 at 13:25 UTC
Your solution In general, if you think something isn't in Perl, try it out, because it usually is. :-) "What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against?"	[reply]