#71 TextIn - Optional Argument to display or store in variable
/textout is great for outputting text (whether it be in a variable or explicitly defined) directly to a file in any format you want. It would be great if there were a reverse capability where you could read text from a file and either store it to a variable or display it to the screen. This would allow /textout to become a powerful tool for moving data out of lists and arrays and into text files (since it would be easier to retrieve the data).
/textin seems like a good fit for this but it can currently only directly output the text to the mud. It would be great if you could use /textin similar to /textout with optional arguments. Something like: /textin {c:\mm\logdata.txt} {variable} {testvariable} or /textin {c:\mm\logdata.txt} {display}.
Your help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
- Xengir
Discussion
Anonymous
Easier said than done but while I'm looking at it consider using the database commands to do this. To access text files as database files you need a file called Schema.ini in the folder you'll have your text db. In it you need a section for each text file you'll want to use. The section looks like this:
[ClanDb.txt]
ColNameHeader = False
Format = CSVDelimited
CharacterSet = ANSI
Col1=ClanNumber short
Col2=ClanName char width 50
Col3=ClanLeader char width 20
Results of select statements run against databases go into arrays. For example:
if you hae a text file ClanDB.txt with:
1,"Circle of Power","Romsek"
2,"The White Rose","Gnoden"
3,"Presence","Ausjos"
5,"Legion of Legends","Wonac"
then
/sqlquery {select * from ClanDB.txt where clannumber >0}{clans}{txt:@sessionpath()}
creates an array called clans with 5 rows of 3 columns.
/loop {1,5,n}_
{/showme {@a(clans,$n,1) @a(clans,$n,2) @a(clans,$n,3)}}
You can create an empty file or delete the contents of an existing one with
/textout {@sesionpath()ClanDB.txt}{ }
An example of an action to fill a text file using db commands would be:
/action {[%0][ %1] %2}
{
/sqlexecute {insert into ClanDB.txt (ClanNumber, ClanName, ClanLeader) values ($0,'@Ltrim($2)','@Ltrim($1)')}
{txt:@sessionpath()}
}_
{clandb}
Of course if you were to do things like this you'd need to manage the action with disablegroup and enable group and clear the array with /unarray clans if you planned on using it repeatedly.