hrows

A family of programs to work with text files structured as a record per line.

Introduction

This is a collection of programs that work with text files that are structured as a series of records, one per line. The fields in each record are separated by tabs, but this is just an option. We call this files listatab files.

The programs are:

• hrows: a graphical front end to work with listata files. It allows the editing of files and automatic update of fields usign formulas. At the moment, only in Spanish.

• vrows: a TUI front end for visualizing the text fields of a listatab file.

• cols: a command line utility to extract columns from listatab files. It can use formulas to create new columns.

• listing: a command line utility to create listing of grades from a listatab file.

File Format

The files processed by the programs are text files in which each line is interpreted as a record. The fields of the record are separated by a special character (the separator) that can be set using the flags: -s for the input and -S for the output. So, you can read a semicolon file with -s";". Or you can convert a semicolon separated file to a comma separated one using -s";" together with -S,.

In case the separator is included in the string, this is surrounded by quotes.

Additionally, the file can have a header to specify the names and (maybe) the types of each field. This header can have two forms:

• A first line that begins with # and has the names of each field surrounded by <> like

  #<Name><Points>
  

  In these case, the type of the field can be added separating it with a vertical bar (|):

  #<Name|TypeString><Points|TypeInt>
  

  You should not need to edit this comment, it will be created by the programs.

• A first line that has the format of the rest of the lines. This line contains the names of the fields. Use the flag -1 to indicate that the first line is to be used as header.

If in the same directory of the file there exists a file with the same name and the extension .conf, it is read and used to recover the information about the fields. This configuration holds additional information like the expressions used to calculate derived fields.

Pending

• Finishing this README.md:

  • Documenting the syntax of the formulas.
  • Better explanation of the programs.

• Translating hrows to English.