Re: loading a flat file into an array

stuart@jane.sas.upenn.edu (Stuart Tener) writes: >This is probably a relatively simple programming problem for the >experienced informix programmers in this group, but here goes. >Let us say for the sake of argument that I have a file which is plain >ascii text. Each line of text is 50 characters in length, and there are >5 lines in this file. >How could I load this file line by line into an array where each element >of the array (defined as 50 characters I guess) would hold a single line >of the file. >Then, how would I do this if I didn't know the length of each record or >how many there were? The only good ways I can think of required calls to c functions or creating a temp table. The c approach would be to call a c function that opens the file, then a loop that calls a c functions that returns a line at a time, and returns a NULL when reading is done, and one that closes the file: CALL c_fopen(filename) LET x = 0 WHILE TRUE LET x = x + 1 IF x > max boundry of array THEN EXIT WHILE END IF LET array[x].line = c_stringfetch() IF array[x].line IS NULL THEN # reached the end of the file EXIT WHILE END IF END WHILE # decrement x so that it holds the count of lines filled LET x = x - 1 # close the file CALL c_fclose(filename) I leave it to others better at writing c code from their heads than I to fill in the c functions. The temp table approach: # create a temp table with a single column sized to be the max width # of any line in the file CREATE TEMP TABLE fillarray (eachline CHAR(80)) # load the temp table from the file. Each line will be a row in the # table. LOAD FROM filename INSERT INTO fillarray # fill the array DECLARE c_fillarray CURSOR FOR SELECT eachline FROM fillarray LET x = 1 FOREACH c_fillarray INTO array[x].line LET x = x + 1 IF x > max size of array EXIT FOREACH END IF END FOREACH # decrement x so that it holds the count of lines filled LET x = x - 1 ================ Dennis J. Pimple Informix CSE / Denver 303-850-0210