Parcing text file

[jessem]

I walked into my schools admin office and saw a staff member (with a ruler) going down a printed file highlighting numbers and names from a jumbled mess sent to her by the sate.

After she does this, she reinputs the data into an excel program and sends it to another department for the state.. .. I had to laugh at how ridiculous this process is. So I told her to hold off a few while I figure out a solution.

I was going to use VBscript, but I know I could make an easier tool for her using AutoIt.

a single line example is. (in bold is what she was highlighting)

CODE

05000000000000021010602199508001000000789100008003100000000000000000Alcorn Crysta Lyn 1100010905200000000

What functions do I want to look for to parse out all but what is needed?

Thanks in advance.

Jesse

[Zedna]

- post more rows

- look at String functions especially StrinRegExp,StringMid

[jessem]

- post more rows

- look at String functions especially StrinRegExp,StringMid

thanks for the reply. My kneejerk reaction was to use Autoit, but a really fast solution for this was to import it into excel.

Thanks again, always a great, supportive forum!

Jesse

[hhzz]

thanks for the reply. My kneejerk reaction was to use Autoit, but a really fast solution for this was to import it into excel.

Well, that depends on what you want to do with the information once you parsed the data AND how often she'll need to do this.

One key thing to know when parsing a text file is: what format is it in? Specifically, is it:

- fixed width text

- delimited text

- XML?

From the looks of that one file, it looks like fixed width, but you really need to look at more records to determine that.

Hope that helps.