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Searching a text file for a particular pice of data ....

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    Searching a text file for a particular pice of data ....

    I receive many txt files. In each one, there is an ID number. It is never in the same place. I need to "look" within the txt file, and find the ID, because that tells me who this txt file "belongs" to.

    Has anyone encountered something like this before?

    What would be the fastest way to identlify who the file belongs to, based on the ID that exists somewhere within the file.

    Gary
    Gary S. Traub, Ph.D.


    #2
    Re: Searching a text file for a particular pice of data ....

    Originally posted by drgarytraub View Post
    I receive many txt files. In each one, there is an ID number. It is never in the same place. I need to "look" within the txt file, and find the ID, because that tells me who this txt file "belongs" to.

    Has anyone encountered something like this before?

    What would be the fastest way to identlify who the file belongs to, based on the ID that exists somewhere within the file.

    Gary
    How do you know what/where is the id?
    Al Buchholz
    Bookwood Systems, LTD
    Weekly QReportBuilder Webinars Thursday 1 pm CST

    Occam's Razor - KISS
    Normalize till it hurts - De-normalize till it works.
    Advice offered and questions asked in the spirit of learning how to fish is better than someone giving you a fish.
    When we triage a problem it is much easier to read sample systems than to read a mind.
    "Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler."
    Albert Einstein

    http://www.iadn.com/images/media/iadn_member.png

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Searching a text file for a particular pice of data ....

      Well, I guess 2 ways, that I can think of.

      First, the data will have a header like: date time name etc etc ID, and the data will be below that, but not lined up well.

      Second, there is a table that has approximately 100 or so ID's and I can search the file for each one of those - starting with the first ID in the table, I could search the text file, but boy that sounds like it could take a long time.

      Any thoughts?

      Gary
      Gary S. Traub, Ph.D.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Searching a text file for a particular pice of data ....

        Yes, either post some of the data here so we can see exactly what it looks like or send a portion of the file to me.

        Too much guessing without seeing.

        I don't know if an import is an option, or using a file read, string extract, string parse is the best option. You'd be surprised how fast it can be..
        Al Buchholz
        Bookwood Systems, LTD
        Weekly QReportBuilder Webinars Thursday 1 pm CST

        Occam's Razor - KISS
        Normalize till it hurts - De-normalize till it works.
        Advice offered and questions asked in the spirit of learning how to fish is better than someone giving you a fish.
        When we triage a problem it is much easier to read sample systems than to read a mind.
        "Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler."
        Albert Einstein

        http://www.iadn.com/images/media/iadn_member.png

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Searching a text file for a particular pice of data ....

          A5's Scanner object offers survivable functionality for this.
          and Heuristics is your friend here.
          As a simple heuristic to boost speed , some users probably send more text files than others, so they should be at the top of the list for preference.
          -
          Also if the numbers were say coming from a certain IP address, even if dynamic, You could record the last IP address and do a pre test against the current text file.
          -
          If we talking thousands of text files a day I'd consider using the Bayesian approach that SpamBayes used (or uses)

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Searching a text file for a particular pice of data ....

            Boy, I am seeing that there is a lot more to this than I thought. String scanner functions seem to open a whole new realm. I will study them. Thanks everyone.

            In the meantime, I did achieve success using some operations, including import of text, deleting irrelevant lines, etc, and it seems to work. For 10 text files, it takes a second or two. As I was doing it, I felt that speed was ok, but was concerned that if there were hundreds of text files, speed could be an issue, and impact on the performance of the server could also be an issue if lots of processing was going on for a few minutes let's say. Are the scanner functions much quicker and therefore recommended for the scenario I am describing?
            Gary S. Traub, Ph.D.

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Searching a text file for a particular pice of data ....

              From my usage of using the scanner.object, it is a stack load faster (pun intended) than any haphazard garden variety of string or char or *word manipulation. Thus its good for CPU cycles, the greenhouse and Dr Gary.
              --

              I don't know what form this 'ID' takes, eg is it a name, an email a numeric sequence, [obviously it is always the same].
              -
              Lets Say it was in the form of a Name,
              There are probably key indicators before the Name
              eg; From, Sincerely, Faithfully, Yours, With Respect, etc and this would put you in the Locality of the ID text
              --

              The real problem is that total task that you are presenting appears to not really be in the core functionality of a Database Application. To be honest I think it falls into the realms of forensic computing. If you were talking about doing multi - millions of these a day I'd suggest learning LISP.

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