Re: File I/O

[Tim Johnson]

On 2006-11-02, Robert Thorpe <rthorpe@realworldtech.com> wrote:
>> IOWS: read a file
>>       process stream a line at a time
>>        process programmatically
>
> Not really.  The normal way of doing the above is to create a buffer
> for the file first.
>
> It might be better if you tell us what you're trying to do, that makes
> it easier to suggest something.

 My hope was to read a file into an emacs data structure. 
 text delimited by an arbitrary line ( blank or all hyphens as an
 example)

 the data structure would be a list of lists.

 each internal list would have 3 elements.

 the first two would be strings, the last a list of strings.
 and the structure would be accessed via 'assoc.
 
 ( ;; begin parent structure
  ( ;; begin element
   "chop"  ;; key
   "Remove last member" ;; terse description
   ("Line one" "Line two" "Line three") ;; verbose description
   ) 
 )

 I've created such a structure using a General Purpose Programming
 Language, but had headaches with escaping. Thought using emacs
 might bypass that problem.

 thanks
 tim

-- 
Tim Johnson <tim@johnsons-web.com>
      http://www.alaska-internet-solutions.com