Flat File Database

meghatronic · 19 Mar 2007 at 15:27

I have a 28mb archaic flat file database (made up of combined individual files) as such:

Code:

#BEGIN_FILE 1_pp.txt
# Field1
Blah

# Field2
blum
bop
wop
#Field 3
tada

#END_FILE

How do I go from this into something I actual understand? I.e. tab delim. or SQL.... even access! or excel...

Ideally I'd like it as:

Code:

1_pp*Blah*blum,bop,wop*tada
2_asdad*asds*adsasd*adsasd
3_asdads*asd*asda*da*asca

(where * = tab)

Any clues?

meghatronic · 19 Mar 2007 at 20:20

Well, looking at the data file, some 'fields' contain multi line values.

EDIT - The 'file' depicts one record, containing three fields.. (in practice there are thousands of records and tens of fields).

meghatronic · 19 Mar 2007 at 21:01

skiba said:
some fancy sed action?

Hmmm... possibly... but it'd have to be mighty fancy!

meghatronic · 20 Mar 2007 at 12:18

There are different fields, though.. so I can't replace field 1 with ¬ etc...

Unless replace all the field x with ¬ but there are oodles of fields..!