[RESOLVED] parsing text file

[endurox]

I have a text file that I need to parse with PHP. The only problem is that the text file isn't comma, tab or semi colon delimited. Its delimited using spacing and a bunch of them at that.

Please see attached and let me know if you have any thoughts as to a possible solution. Thank you for your time.

[Imperialoutpost]

You could use preg_replace to change any multiple spaces into something unique and then explode it into an array, then you could pretty much do what you wanted with it.

You'd need to break the first line into number / name as it only has the one space.

For example:

<?php

$lines = file('100430A.TXT'); // Load the file into an array

foreach ($lines as $key => $value) {	

$value = trim(preg_replace('/\s{2,}/', '+|+', $value)); // Replace multiple spaces with something unique - +|+
$thisLine = explode('+|+', $value); // Explode the line into an array breaking on our unique separator

// Split the first part into number and name and put them on the end of the array
if (preg_match('/^([0-9]+)\s(.*)/i', $thisLine[0], $nameNum)) {

	$thisLine[] = $nameNum[1];
	$thisLine[] = $nameNum[2];

}

echo '<pre>';
print_r($thisLine);
echo '</pre>';

}

?>

This would output something like:

Array
(
    [0] => 1 Robert Beckwith
    [1] => Chris Soule
    [2] => B
    [3] => 1
    [4] => 1
    [5] => .
    [6] => |
    [7] => 1
    [8] => 1
    [9] => .
    [10] => 200.43
    [11] => 64.24
    [12] => 1.70(OA)
    [13] => 1
    [14] => Robert Beckwith
)

Array
(
    [0] => 2 Sarah Penn
    [1] => Cathy Mayer
    [2] => C
    [3] => .
    [4] => .
    [5] => .
    [6] => |
    [7] => .
    [8] => .
    [9] => .
    [10] => 153.86
    [11] => 49.31
    [12] => 
    [13] => 2
    [14] => Sarah Penn
)

Array
(
    [0] => 3 Calvin Cobb
    [1] => Michael Hunt
    [2] => C
    [3] => 5
    [4] => 5
    [5] => 1
    [6] => |
    [7] => 3
    [8] => 3
    [9] => 1
    [10] => 176.31
    [11] => 56.51
    [12] => 0.84(SA)
    [13] => 3
    [14] => Calvin Cobb
)

Array
(
    [0] => 4 Joy Schick
    [1] => Ronald Schick
    [2] => A
    [3] => .
    [4] => .
    [5] => .
    [6] => |
    [7] => 6
    [8] => .
    [9] => .
    [10] => 169.61
    [11] => 54.36
    [12] => 0.28(SA)
    [13] => 4
    [14] => Joy Schick
)

etc...

[mrbaseball34]

endurox;10953748 wrote:

I have a text file that I need to parse with PHP. The only problem is that the text file isn't comma, tab or semi colon delimited. Its delimited using spacing and a bunch of them at that.

Please see attached and let me know if you have any thoughts as to a possible solution. Thank you for your time.

Do you have a field layout? i.e
Column 1 = x chars wide
column 2 = x chars wide

I am having problems figuring out where each column should begin/end.

[endurox]

Thank you all for your replies.

Great work, ImperialOutpost it has lead me in the right direction.

Another question is how do I skip the first 5 lines (because they contain no relevant data) as an example. I've tried creating a loop and also tried fseek but perhaps I'm missing something.

There is really no fixed layout, I'll need to id the lines via the numbers for insertion into a mysql database, but thats later. For now I would like to see if it is possible to skip "X" amount of lines.

$fileName="100430A.TXT";
$openFile = fopen($fileName, "r") or die ("Unable to open the file $filename");

$rank = 1;

while( !feof($openFile) ) {
	//example i would like to skip the first 14 lines, can't find a php function that will do this
	$dirtyLine = fgets($openFile);

$sPattern = '/\s\s+/';
$sReplace = ' ';

$dirtyLine = preg_replace($sPattern, $sReplace, $dirtyLine);
$lines2 = explode(' ',$dirtyLine);

switch($rank) {
	case 1:
		$rank_ico = 'gold: ';
		break;
	case 2:
		$rank_ico = 'silver: ';
		break;
	case 3:
		$rank_ico = 'bronze: ';
		break;
	default:
		$rank_ico = '';
}

if(!empty($lines2[15])) { $percents = $lines2[15]; } else { $percents = ' ';}
if(!empty($lines2[16])) { $masterpts = $lines2[16]; } else { $masterpts = ' ';}
echo '
  <tr>
	<td>'.$rank_ico.$rank.'</td>
	<td>'.$lines2[1].'</td>
	<td>'.$lines2[2].' '.$lines2[3].' &amp; '.$lines2[4].' '.$lines2[5].'</td>
	<td>'.$lines2[6].'</td>
	<td>'.$lines2[7].' '.$lines2[8].' '.$lines2[9].'</td>
	<td>'.$lines2[11].' '.$lines2[12].' '.$lines2[13].'</td>
	<td>'.$lines2[14].'</td>
	<td>'.$percents.'</td>
	<td>'.$masterpts.'</td>
  </tr>
  ';

$rank++;
}

fclose($openFile);

[bradgrafelman]

Just throw away the first five reads to the file..

for($i = 5; $i > 0; $i--)
    fgets($openFile);

[endurox]

Thank you. 🙂