Re: parsing columns

Manav Mathur ha scritto: 
Hi all,
I have a text file with columns, where the columns may not be aligned,
and not all lines may have data in all columns:

header1     header2     header3    header4
------------------------------------------------------------
l1dat1        l1dat2        l1dat3      l1dat4
l2dat1                                        l2dat4
l3veryveryveryverylongdat1 l3dat2

As you can see, line1 has all data, line2 is missing clomuns 2 and 3,
line 3 is a mess :)

Any thoughts on parsing such a "table"?
Please don't offer solutions suggesting to change the way the text
file is written, I have no control over that...

Regards,
--
Offer Kaye



How do you logically determine that "l2dat4" in line 2 is column 4 and not
column 2??

Manav




Just a thought: because l2dat4 starting column is greater than column 4 header starting column ?

Marcello
.