Convert Text to XML

[ceh4702]

I want to convert an ASCII plain text file with fixed width fields to XML.

File source:

COBOL TEXT Mainframe ALL Caps Fixed Length saved as Notepad on my PC.

Is there some kind of easy program to do this?

Have you got some links?

If I want to preserve all Spaces can I do that? Some fields have spaces and some have spaces on the end. Is it possible to pad the spaces instead of chopping them off like a database file would do?

Not a big fan of CSV.



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[k5tm]

Tools exist. Try StylusStudio. I have been using it the last few days. It has an Import CSV to XML wizard, though that is not the functionality I have used.

Certainly XML understands spaces and will preserve them if you wish.

You might also want to have a look at Liant's XML Extensions.

Tom Morrison

http://www.liant.com

 

[harebrain]

This would be pretty easy to do with XSLT. Use a text editor (if on UNIX, use sed so you can create a reusable script) to wrap each line with a tag, then wrap the whole document in a root tag. Now that you have an XML document, you can use XSLT's substring functions to chop up each input line as needed.

 

[ceh4702]

Thanks for the Ideas.

I actually downloaded the StylusStudio program to preview it. I think the technical assistance staff for our program we use for sending the files is going to come up with a solution for now.

I like the idea of the script. I could probably write a simple COBOL Program that can do just about all that or part of it. COBOL is just basically a text processor. I looked at XML and it looks similar to HTML in design. I will play around with it and see what I think.



If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.