Parse a text file with quoted delimiters?

Thread view:

flarosa - 11 Apr 2006 18:32 GMT

Hi,

Is there an easy way to parse a line of text which may contain quoted
instances of the delimiting character?

For example,
1200,Bob's Ties,400 Atwood Avenue
1201,"Mary, Jane and Associates",250 Washington St.

In the 2nd line, I'd want the whole string "Mary, Jane and Associates"
to parse as one token.

The two simple ways I know of parsing text in java - StringTokenizer
and String.split() - would end up parsing the 2nd line into four tokens
instead of 3.

Thanks,
Frank

Reply to this Message

Ben - 11 Apr 2006 18:35 GMT

> Hi,
>
[quoted text clipped - 14 lines]
> Thanks,
> Frank

Look at the regex API it has everything you need.

Reply to this Message

Roedy Green - 11 Apr 2006 19:01 GMT

>In the 2nd line, I'd want the whole string "Mary, Jane and Associates"
>to parse as one token.

see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/csv.html

Signature

Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Java custom programming, consulting and coaching.

Reply to this Message

Thomas Fritsch - 11 Apr 2006 19:17 GMT

> Is there an easy way to parse a line of text which may contain quoted
> instances of the delimiting character?
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
> and String.split() - would end up parsing the 2nd line into four tokens
> instead of 3.

See <http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/io/StreamTokenizer.html>.
With that you can do things like:

String line = ...;
StreamTokenizer tok = new StreamTokenizer(new StringReader(line));
tok.resetSyntax();
tok.wordChars('\u0000','\uFFFF');
tok.whitespaceChars(',', ',');
tok.quoteChar('\"');
while (tok.nextToken() != StreamTokenizer.TT_EOF) {
String word = tok.sval;
System.out.println(word);
}

Signature

"Thomas:Fritsch$ops.de".replace(':', '.').replace('$', '@')

Reply to this Message

flarosa - 11 Apr 2006 23:17 GMT

That worked well. Thanks.

Reply to this Message

Oliver Wong - 11 Apr 2006 19:42 GMT

> Hi,
>
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
> and String.split() - would end up parsing the 2nd line into four tokens
> instead of 3.

It looks like you're dealing with CSV (Comma Seperated Value) files. If
so, you might want to look for a CSV parsing library rather than reinventing
the wheel by trying to implement your own version.

- Oliver

Reply to this Message

Jubz - 11 Apr 2006 20:58 GMT

Yes, indeed.
Try Ostermiller's utilities. I've used their CSV library, and it works
great.
http://ostermiller.org/utils/.

Reply to this Message

Parse a text file with quoted delimiters?

Free Magazines