Read from file, then display results

[Mark Brownell]

on 7/7/04 7:30 PM, Marian Petrides at mpetrides at earthlink.net wrote:

> I have two questions:
> 
> 1)  What I would like to be able to do is:
> 
> Figure out a more general way to specify number of iterations for the
> repeat  (something like:  repeat with j = 1 to the number of words in
> file "AddressList.txt"
> 
> How do I do this?

yours:
  put it into AddListContents
  split AddListContents by tab
  repeat with j = 1 to 6
    put AddListContents[j] into line j of field "Results"
  end repeat

mine:
  put it into AddListContents
  set the itemDelimiter to tab
  put 1 into thisSpot
  repeat for each item j in AddListContents
    put j into line thisSpot of field "Results"
    add 1 to thisSpot
  end repeat

> 2) In a similar vein, is there a way to break the data up into items as
> it is being read.  I think I can probably use   "read from file until
> tab"
> 
> What I can't figure out is how to set up a loop that will read from the
> file until a tab is encountered, put the data into AddListContents[j]
> then go on and read the next item.
> 
> Again, I think the stumbling block is the syntax which will tell the
> loop to repeat until it reaches the end of the file.  Eg,
> 
> Repeat with j = 1 to  <what do I put here>
> read from file until tab
> <how do I tell it I want to read from the last tab until the next tab>
> end repeat
> 
> TIA.
> 
> M

try this:

on mouseUp
  global gFilePath
  answer file "select a file"
  if it contains ".txt" then
    put URL ("file:" & it) into AddListContents
    put it into gFilePath
  else
    answer " Not a text file"
    exit mouseUp
  end if
end mouseUp

-- work from the variable AddListContents
-- after all work is done to your var then save it using this:

on mouseUp
  global gFilePath
  put compress(AddListContents) into URL ("binfile:" & gFilePath)
  -- now your file is compressed
  -- to open and decompress it use:
  -- put decompress(URL ("binfile:" & it)) into AddListContents
  -- for none compression save:
  -- put AddListContents into URL ("file:" & gFilePath)
end mousUp

hope this helped some,

Mark