Working with fixed format text db's

[Frank Swarbrick]

Neil Cerutti wrote:
> The underlying problem, of course, is the archaic flat-file
> format with fixed-width data fields. Even the Department of
> Education has moved on to XML for most of it's data files, which
> are much simpler for me to parse.

XML easier to parse than fixed position file.  Wow!

Very likely this file is created by a COBOL program, because this is 
what COBOL loves.

01  my-record.
     05  ssn        pic 9(9).
     05  id         pic 9(10).
     05  last-name  pic x(16).
     05  first-name pic x(11).
     05  phone-nbr  pic 9(10).
     05  filler     pic x(1254).
     05  filler     pic x(6) value '2813'.
     05  major      pic x(5).

write my-record

Haha.  I'm just amused that new languages make simpler some things that 
were hard in older languages, but in turn make more difficult things 
that were simple!

Frank
COBOL expert/Python newbie