Perl is more modern (and more powerful, and more complicated), but I
would also suggest taking a look at awk. It's a little strange when you
first look at it, but once you're familiar with it, it's perfect for
looking at single rows of data column by column.
Joe
Andrew Douglas Pitonyak wrote:
SOTL wrote:
Hi All
I have a problem with what I am trying to accomplish which begans
with I have no idea of what I need to do technically to accomplish my
objective so hence this posting.
Basic objective is a data base of clients along with their address
phone numbers, contact names, and preferences plus other additional
fields. The eventual product of this information could be used in a
number of different computers so a client server DB such as mysql or
postgres or Open Office 2 will be needed.
All well and good but there is a pre stage to the data base. In order
to input the required data I must first output it from a number of
existing data bases over which I have no control of the output
consequentally there are issues with data placement and format which
is easiest to explain by example.
For example my database requires data to be in the form of:
Given_Names | Family_Name | Address_1| Address_2 | City | State | Zip
and I receive data in the format of
Names | Address | City_&_State_Zip
The cut past and text transformation options are slightly better in
MS Office than they are in Open Office so I have been manipulating
this data by means of MS Word and Excel to obtain the correct format
which is painful and time consuming as neither a word editor or
spread sheet are setup with the tools required for data editing and
column formating.
I would thus like to know if anyone knows of a spreadsheet type
program not set up to do mathematical operations but data editing.
The program must be spread sheet based so that one may see the data
and provide better tools which are again best explained by example.
Lets assume that one has a matrix of test data that is 20 columns
wide and 30,000 rows deep, not a small matrix, with data scattered
through in the wrong column. For example:
Given Names for individual 1 is 1 name, for individual 2 it is 5
names, and for individual 3 it is 3 names. English names of first,
middle, last are not to difficult but sprinkle in a number of
Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese names and total confusion reigns not
to mention issues with other regions.
Address can be 1 line, 2 lines, or 3 lines et.
By now you get the picture of what the data is.
What is needed is sort ability for all or blocks of data by:
1. either rows or columns.
2. by data from the front or back
Let me explain the latter.
Lets assume that you have a number of individuals in your data which
have 2, 3, 4, or 5 names but all have Jr. or II, or III at the end
which is not required for this application so it would be best to
remove such formality in simplification. This feature would allow one
to search by the last letter of the field first.
Anyway by now one gets the idea that a spread sheet/word editor or
database is not what I have reference to as none of these programs is
geared to organizing data into the apposite column for usage in a
data base.
Any help suggestions or ideas concerning how to procede, which
programs to examine or more applicable bulletin board would be
appreciated.
Thanks
Frank
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When I had to recognize data similar to yours, I wrote a Perl script
to "clean" the data.
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