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 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 realize this does not pertain directly to the debian
> os and would appreciate direction to more appropriate
> mailing list if anyone knows one.
>
Best answer is probably some other database, like PostgreSQL. However,
if you're going to store in a text file, use tab as the delimiter. The
reason being that any embedded spaces within the fields themselves will
trip up your parsing of the files, unless you use something not likely
to occur in your fields, like the tab character.
And if you have typical tasks you will always do with these files,
consider using Perl rather than sed and awk. Perl will do everything sed
and awk will do, and more.
Paul
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