Re: OT: Collecting data in text files
On Mon, Aug 27, 2001 at 12:29:17PM -0700, Abner Gershon wrote:
| I have am currently dual booting to debian and would
| like to change to rely more on debian and related
| applications.
|
| I currently collect lists of information on many
| topics such as restaurants, phone lists, file folders,
| slides using a database program, Lotus approach. Since
| I am the only user of this information I thought I
| could record this information in text files using vim
| and then use gawk and sed to access this data.
I know nothing of Lotus approach, but maybe you would like to use a
free database such as PostgreSQL or MySQL.
| I have done a little reading on how these programs
| work and would like to know if it is generally better
| to seperate columns with spaces or tabs for this
| purpose and if this would be the most appropriate
| technique for collecting and organizing such data.
I think that some other setinel character would be better if you want
to allow spaces in the fields. Use a ':' or something. XML is file
format that is simple to read because the parsers are written for you.
The real issue is determining what you intend to do with the data.
Once you know what the data is and how the data is to be used then the
proper tools for managing it can be determined.
-D
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