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Overview |
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The
Microsearch Text File Format Editor is a powerful tool for creating
and editing "text file format files". A text file format file is a
special file (with the file extension .mtf) that specifies the format
of data in a text file. Such a format file can be used to read (and
understand) and write the data contained in a formatted text file.
The general operations performed by the Format Editor are depicted in
the following figure: |
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The "Formatted Text File" box
represents a text file in which each line of text is a "record" of
formatted data. For example, one line in this text file may be:
"John Doe", "19 Chipmunk Lane", 101-555-7834
This "record" contains a person's name, a street address, and a
telephone number. The file may contain many of these lines (or
records), one for each person in the "database". The purpose of the
"Text Format File (*.mtf)" is to specify how the "Formatted Text
File" is to be read and written.
The "Format Editor" is a dialog box that can be used to create and
edit format files. Once this is done, the Format Editor knows how to
load and interpret, and write data in the specified format. The
Format Editor also knows, of course, how to load and save the format
files it uses.
The use of the Format Editor (and its associated input/output
functions) makes it relatively easy for a program to handle data in
text files of virtually any format. This makes the application
developer's job of implementing the handling of various formats
easier, and thereby provides a more comprehensive list of supported
formats to the end-user. |
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