Since so many of the search engine queries that lead readers to this site have to do with manipulating the columns in a text data file, it’s probably worthwhile discussing column manipulation. Given that there’s actually quite a few scenarios, I’ll have to spread the discussion out over several postings (and unfortunately, several months).

Back in the late 1980s, I was working as a freelance programmer for a great boss. Whatever software I didn’t have time to write, he’d go buy something suitable. He once found a utility program that used a simple notation to describe how the columns of an input data file should be manipulated. I couldn’t believe how simple it was to extract, insert, or delete specific lines or columns of data. Except that the data file had to have fixed columns, which for us was fine.

Ever since 1996 or so, when I started working on Internet projects, I’ve tried to sit down and write a similar utility for web-based data. But I spent a lot of years as a consultant, and that means only writing software on an as-needed basis. That means that I wrote tons of data manipulation utilities in several programming languages, but never anything as robust as that utility that my old boss had found.

So, since so many of you visitors are “asking” (via search engine queries) for tutorials on line and column manipulation, I’m going to go ahead with the series that I always intended to write and post here. Except that I’m going to do things a bit differently than originally planned.

For example, I’ll talk about manipulating the lines and columns of a text data file, including fixed columns and comma-delimited (CSV) files. But what I’ve always found is that people who understand the basic algorithms and data structures necessary for doing this can easily translate it to the appropriate computer language.

So I will not always gear these articles specifically at Perl or PHP, or whatever, but I will give general algorithms, diagrams, an snippets of code. I think that this is more valuable than me instilling my style of coding on you. If it comes down to you specifically needing to know a certain Perl or PHP operator, you can always ask me, via the comments section of any post. If I can answer it with a short response and have the time, I’ll do so. If you need code written for you, I’ll do it at a reasonable rate, payable via Paypal. (I’ll be setting up the Jyve application for Skype VoIP internet phone calling.)

So, keep an eye for new tutorials, probably starting around late August, as I’d like to write a few at a time before posting them.