Parsing a semi-random file

[BFP]

Hi All.

I am trying to parse a file in which the only known things are the keywords I wish to parse for (of which there are several), the fact that the keyword and the value of the keyword are separated by a space, and that there will be one or more right parens &quot" then a left paren "(" before the next keyword. Of course there is the added complication that the keywords are case insensitive.

For example, I may wish to parse the version number form "version", the level number from "level", and several names from "name" from something similar to that below.

...junk(version 9 8 7)(level 20))(junk junk)(junk junk))))...(name ABC)(junk junk)(name DEF)...))))... EOF

Now take the above and multiply by a few million lines and the fact that there are several other keywords I would like to grab, you can see the complication.

Is there an efficient method to grab the desired keywords?

An example would be great.

Thanks in advanced.

--D

 

[toolkit]

If you are using Java 1.4, then you can make use of the powerful new regular expressions:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/docs/api/java/util/regex/package-summary.html

Otherewise, if you are using an earlier version of Java, then try the StringTokenizer class:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/api/java/util/StringTokenizer.html

HTH, cheers Neil