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Parsing and splitting file contents

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r00t uk

Parsing and splitting file contents

Ok, I am new to smalltalk. I have tried browsing and searching for methods related to parsing and splitting file contents based on a delimiter, but I am not having much success. :( Old google is not helping either so I can only assume that I am missing something "obvious".

I am reading a tab delimited file into a string. I want to iterate through this string and split by tab, or any other defined value (, . | # tab, cr, etc.), delimiter into substrings which are assigned to a Collection (Array, Dictionary, Bag, etc.), or instant variables.

I was hoping there was going to be something like:

Bag := FileStream collect: [:x | split: crlf].
Dictionary := Bag collect: [:x | split: tab].

Does that make any sense? Basically create Bag with contents of FileStream split by crlf and then split Bag elements by tab into key value pairs.

Again, I am surprised by the lack of examples demonstrating to newbies how to perform basic operations such as this. I know it is not the smalltalk way of learning, but it does raise the bar for making progress. The language may be easy, but finding which methods to use to solve problems is a bit laborious.

Thanks in advance.

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Enrico Schwass-2

Re: Parsing and splitting file contents

findTokens:escapedBy:

might helpful

Am 29.08.2009 um 15:48 schrieb r00t uk <[hidden email]>:

> Ok, I am new to smalltalk. I have tried browsing and searching for
> methods related to parsing and splitting file contents based on a
> delimiter, but I am not having much success. :( Old google is not
> helping either so I can only assume that I am missing something
> "obvious".
>
> I am reading a tab delimited file into a string. I want to iterate
> through this string and split by tab, or any other defined value
> (, . | # tab, cr, etc.), delimiter into substrings which are
> assigned to a Collection (Array, Dictionary, Bag, etc.), or instant
> variables.
>
> I was hoping there was going to be something like:
>
> Bag := FileStream collect: [:x | split: crlf].
> Dictionary := Bag collect: [:x | split: tab].
>
> Does that make any sense? Basically create Bag with contents of
> FileStream split by crlf and then split Bag elements by tab into key
> value pairs.
>
> Again, I am surprised by the lack of examples demonstrating to
> newbies how to perform basic operations such as this. I know it is
> not the smalltalk way of learning, but it does raise the bar for
> making progress. The language may be easy, but finding which
> methods to use to solve problems is a bit laborious.
>
> Thanks in advance.
> _______________________________________________
> Beginners mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners

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Herbert König

Re: Parsing and splitting file contents

In reply to this post by r00t uk

Hi,

ru> I am reading a tab delimited file into a string. I want to
ru> iterate through this string and split by tab, or any other defined
ru> value (, . | # tab, cr, etc.), delimiter into substrings which are
ru> assigned to a Collection (Array, Dictionary, Bag, etc.), or
ru> instant variables.

String>>findTokens is your friend here.

And FileStream>>contentsOfEntireFile gets the whole file into a string
before you find the tokens. But I'd prefer to read the file one line
at a time into a collection of strings.

Cheers,

Herbert

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K. K. Subramaniam

Re: Parsing and splitting file contents

In reply to this post by r00t uk

On Saturday 29 Aug 2009 7:18:02 pm r00t uk wrote:
> I am reading a tab delimited file into a string. I want to iterate through
> this string and split by tab, or any other defined value (, . | # tab, cr,
> etc.), delimiter into substrings which are assigned to a Collection (Array,
> Dictionary, Bag, etc.), or instant variables.
See String>linesDo: and its senders. For parsing a line into tokens, you can
use findTokens:

>Again, I am surprised by the lack of examples demonstrating to newbies how
>to perform basic operations such as this. I know it is not the smalltalk
>way of learning, but it does raise the bar for making progress.
Searching source code is quite easy in Squeak. In this case, I used
(Alt+Shift+W) to bring up the message search tool and searched for "lines".
Then I used senders/implementers to explore methods.

HTH .. Subbu
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r00t uk

Re: Parsing and splitting file contents

Thanks everyone for the replies. I have not had a chance to try it yet, but it was one of the methods that I had come across but was not sure if it was the "best" one to use.

2009/8/29 K. K. Subramaniam <[hidden email]>

On Saturday 29 Aug 2009 7:18:02 pm r00t uk wrote:
> I am reading a tab delimited file into a string. I want to iterate through
> this string and split by tab, or any other defined value (, . | # tab, cr,
> etc.), delimiter into substrings which are assigned to a Collection (Array,
> Dictionary, Bag, etc.), or instant variables.

See String>linesDo: and its senders. For parsing a line into tokens, you can
use findTokens:

>Again, I am surprised by the lack of examples demonstrating to newbies how
>to perform basic operations such as this. I know it is not the smalltalk
>way of learning, but it does raise the bar for making progress.

Searching source code is quite easy in Squeak. In this case, I used
(Alt+Shift+W) to bring up the message search tool and searched for "lines".
Then I used senders/implementers to explore methods.

HTH .. Subbu

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