Seems fairly simple to read from this file format. Just open an InputStream, read line by line looking for the header, trailer and other details records. You could potentially also use regular expressions to read entire records in one go but that would need you to read the stream contents in memory and might not be efficient so the line by line approach seems simple and efficient.
Basically just write a Java program to fit your needs. 30-40 lines of code would probably get the job done in reading the sample format you provided. Sanjiv On 12/20/06, Josh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The file itself consists of a header record, several different detail records and a trailer record. The record type is driven by the first two characters on each line. Each different record type has a fixed length format. Here is an very over simplified example: 810HDR Invoice 1972-05-12John Doe 810DTL 01-2304040200 $2.34 810DTL 02-4030400400 $1.34 810TOT 600 $1004 810END Steven In this example, you can see that characters 4-6 (HDR, DTL, TOT, END) drive the record type and each record type has a very specific record layout. ------------------------------ *From:* Sanjiv Jivan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Wednesday, December 20, 2006 6:02 PM *To:* users@appfuse.dev.java.net *Subject:* Re: [appfuse-user] OT: Suggestions for flat file library? What's the data format of the file? CSV or something custom? On 12/20/06, *Josh* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Sorry guys, I know this is old school, but I need to have the ability to parse flat files. Any suggestions? These flat files have a header, trailer and several types of detail records. I would appreciate any comments/advice. Best regards, Joshua
