Re: Flat Files

Posted by webmaster Guido on November 21, 2002 at 17:25:17:

In Reply to: Flat Files posted by J.Bumatai Member ID p12258 on November 20, 2002 at 20:21:02:

: Ok, another project that I am working on with Flat Files are Email Lists. Our Org has to be able to have separate lists: students, instructors, announcements, etc.. These lists are simple .txt files but one of the things that happens is that they need to sorted into a single email address per line. And, they may need to be separated, sorted or merged at times as All Students and Instructors on the Announcement lists whereas Students and Instructors are on separate lists. Plus this very iritating thing happens sometimes when I am purging files: some of the .txt files are deleted and I have not fine tuned the purger to not delete those specific files so I need to make autmoatic backups of the lists as well.

: Ok, that is the details of the question: How?

: thanks again.
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Before working out a solution, let's make sure that I understand you well:

1. Firstly, you want to re-arrange the .txt files so that each line only contains one address. So, the original files have several addresses per line. How are the addresses separated, by a space, by another character, by several spaces, by space or other characters?

2. Do the original files only contain email addresses, or also other info like last name, first name? If yes, does this info have to be copied to the re-arranged files, or only the email addresses?

3. Next, you also want to merge several files into a new list and save that one, possibly under a new name?

4. You want to automatically create a backup of each file, if it is modified and if you save it under the original name?