Parse a text file with quoted delimiters?

[flarosa]

Hi,

Is there an easy way to parse a line of text which may contain quoted
instances of the delimiting character?

For example,
1200,Bob's Ties,400 Atwood Avenue
1201,"Mary, Jane and Associates",250 Washington St.

In the 2nd line, I'd want the whole string "Mary, Jane and Associates"
to parse as one token.

The two simple ways I know of parsing text in java - StringTokenizer
and String.split() - would end up parsing the 2nd line into four tokens
instead of 3.

Thanks,
Frank

 

[Ben]

Hi,

Is there an easy way to parse a line of text which may contain quoted
instances of the delimiting character?

For example,
1200,Bob's Ties,400 Atwood Avenue
1201,"Mary, Jane and Associates",250 Washington St.

In the 2nd line, I'd want the whole string "Mary, Jane and Associates"
to parse as one token.

The two simple ways I know of parsing text in java - StringTokenizer
and String.split() - would end up parsing the 2nd line into four tokens
instead of 3.

Thanks,
Frank

Look at the regex API it has everything you need.

 

[Roedy Green]

In the 2nd line, I'd want the whole string "Mary, Jane and Associates"
to parse as one token.

see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/csv.html

 

[Thomas Fritsch]

Is there an easy way to parse a line of text which may contain quoted
instances of the delimiting character?

For example,
1200,Bob's Ties,400 Atwood Avenue
1201,"Mary, Jane and Associates",250 Washington St.

In the 2nd line, I'd want the whole string "Mary, Jane and Associates"
to parse as one token.

The two simple ways I know of parsing text in java - StringTokenizer
and String.split() - would end up parsing the 2nd line into four tokens
instead of 3.

See <http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/io/StreamTokenizer.html>.
With that you can do things like:

String line = ...;
StreamTokenizer tok = new StreamTokenizer(new StringReader(line));
tok.resetSyntax();
tok.wordChars('\u0000','\uFFFF');
tok.whitespaceChars(',', ',');
tok.quoteChar('\"');
while (tok.nextToken() != StreamTokenizer.TT_EOF) {
String word = tok.sval;
System.out.println(word);
}

 

[Oliver Wong]

Hi,

Is there an easy way to parse a line of text which may contain quoted
instances of the delimiting character?

For example,
1200,Bob's Ties,400 Atwood Avenue
1201,"Mary, Jane and Associates",250 Washington St.

In the 2nd line, I'd want the whole string "Mary, Jane and Associates"
to parse as one token.

The two simple ways I know of parsing text in java - StringTokenizer
and String.split() - would end up parsing the 2nd line into four tokens
instead of 3.

It looks like you're dealing with CSV (Comma Seperated Value) files. If
so, you might want to look for a CSV parsing library rather than reinventing
the wheel by trying to implement your own version.

- Oliver

 

[Jubz]

Yes, indeed.
Try Ostermiller's utilities. I've used their CSV library, and it works
great.
http://ostermiller.org/utils/.

 

[flarosa]

That worked well. Thanks.