Posted by Jerry Stuckle on 01/24/08 11:49

Carolyn Marenger wrote:
> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> Carolyn Marenger wrote:
>>> McKirahan wrote:
>>>> "Carolyn Marenger" <cajunk@marenger.com> wrote in message
>>>> news:7c0f$4795ea54$cf70133e$1079@PRIMUS.CA...
>>>>> McKirahan wrote:
>>>>>> "Carolyn Marenger" <cajunk@marenger.com> wrote in message
>>>>>> news:74fb1$479501d1$cf70133e$7458@PRIMUS.CA...
>>>>>>> Can someone point me in the direction of some good documentation on
>>>> text
>>>>>>> parsing?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I want to take a bunch of text files (rtf), read them in and dump
>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>> contents in a database. The files are effectively a flat file
>>>> database,
>>>>>>> with I suspect some fairly intricate programming needed to
>>>>>>> process the
>>>>>>> files. Unfortunately, they are laid out for human readability, not
>>>> data
>>>>>>> conversion.
>>>>>> A few questions.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> How many is a "bunch"?
>>>>>> What would the target database be -- MySQL?
>>>>>> What table and column structures do you envision?
>>>>>> Perhaps simply a single table with two columns:
>>>>>> filename (key) and a memo field containing the data?
>>>>>> What is the purpose behind doing this?
>>>>>>
>>>>> A few answers
>>>>>
>>>>> A bunch is about a dozen. Basically one large file that was broken
>>>>> into
>>>>> sixteen subsets, following the initial letter for each record.
>>>>>
>>>>> The target database would be MySQL
>>>>>
>>>>> I haven't looked too closely at the data, but I think one main table
>>>>> with a few linked tables for those cases where there may be more than
>>>>> one piece of data for a category. There are about 25 categories to
>>>>> each
>>>>> record. Eventually there would be additional structure added
>>>>> around the
>>>>> imported data, but that isn't relevant to importing the data
>>>>> itself. (I
>>>>> will confirm this before beginning to code.
>>>>>
>>>>> The purpose: I am a D&D fan and I run games. I would like to be
>>>>> able to
>>>>> reference the material and automate much of the process so I don't
>>>>> have
>>>>> to lug and reference 20lbs of books.
>>>>
>>>> Any chance the RTF files are online so I could look at them?
>>>>
>>>> Perhaps http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/srd35?
>>>> http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/v35/SRD.zip contains 88 RTF files.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Also, I gather, this might be a one-time effort; correct?
>>>>
>>>> Not what you requested but ...
>>>>
>>>> I've developed a VBScript solution that takes the following approach:
>>>> for a given folder, each RTF file is opened in MS-Word and saved
>>>> as a text file which is opened and read then saved in an MS-Access
>>>> database table containing 3 columns: id (AutoNumber), file, data.
>>>>
>>>> Using those 86 RTF files it created a 10MB MS-Access database.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, they are online. Yes, you can look at them. Yes, those are the
>>> files except I only care about the 16 monster files. Yes, this is a
>>> one time effort.
>>>
>>> My goal is to create a encounter generation program - where I key in
>>> climate, geography, season, encounter level, time of day, proximity
>>> to civilization, and the application gives me a suggested random
>>> encounter suited to the scenario. For example, if the party was
>>> wandering around the city sewers on a hot summer night, they might
>>> encounter a pack of giant rats being led by a were rat.
>>
>> Only if
>>
>> 1/. It was los angeles
>>
>> 2/. They had all taken too many mind enhacing drugs.
>>
>> Otherwise its likely to be Viles disease, at the most interesting ;-)
>>
>>> I would then want the program to determine how many rats, how many
>>> hit points each, and any other pertinent variable data, including
>>> what weapons and treasure the wererat was carrying and using.
>>>
>>> Having the rtfs loaded into a database like your script does, would
>>> enable faster searches, it would not go the next step and perform the
>>> various calculations based on the results of the searches. It is a
>>> good start, but if it has stripped any of the rtf encoding, it may
>>> make it harder to have a script find the various 'fields'.
>>>
>>
>> Go full database surely. The art is to define the 'monster' table with
>> extensibility for all the monster classes one might encounter.
>> When doing ANYTHING based on a database, the most important thing is
>> to spend time designing table layouts. And write a data dictionary.
>> And keep it up to date.
>>
>
> That I know. Can you recommend any software for documenting the
> database design? Should I stick to ye old word processor?
>
> Thanks, Carolyn
>

Try comp.lang.mysql. They've got all kinds of suggestions on database
stuff there.

--
==================
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Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
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