quote:I don't think this would actually be as difficult as you're supposing, here. But that said: what programming languages do you know? There are many, many ways you could code a basic parser for this.
There are about 12 different types of events that we track so a full parse of the whole report would be very difficult and would require building a fully custom parser, which we don't have financial authorization for.
code:Of course if my assumptions don't translate to your problem then the above code might not be a very useful example. And there's a lot of room for more powerful functions....Among other things you might want something that isn't case sensitive, parses the result data and stores it in a structured format, etc.Sub Test()
Dim strText As String
Dim oData As DataObject
Set oData = New DataObject
strText = ExtractText("C:\test.txt", "heading #3", "heading #4")
oData.SetText strText
oData.PutInClipboard
End Sub
Function ExtractText(strFileName, strBeginText, strEndText) As String
Dim oFS As FileSystemObject
Dim oTS As TextStream
Dim oFl As File
Dim blBeginTextFound As Boolean
Dim blEndTextFound As Boolean
Dim strLine As String
Dim strReturnText As String
Set oFS = New FileSystemObject
Set oTS = oFS.OpenTextFile(strFileName, ForReading, False)
Do
strLine = oTS.ReadLine
If InStr(1, strLine, strBeginText, vbTextCompare) > 0 Then
blBeginTextFound = True
End If
Loop Until blBeginTextFound = True Or oTS.AtEndOfStream = True
If blBeginTextFound = False Then
ExtractText = "Error: begin header not found"
oTS.Close
Exit Function
End If
Do
strLine = oTS.ReadLine
If InStr(1, strLine, strEndText, vbTextCompare) = 0 Then
strReturnText = strReturnText & strLine & vbNewLine
Else
blEndTextFound = True
End If
Loop Until blEndTextFound = True Or oTS.AtEndOfStream = True
oTS.Close
ExtractText = strReturnText
End Function
quote:In one month you'd save 150 hours. Given that the program could almost certainly be designed to run overnight and save or email results, you could easily recoup 120 hours of development time in the very first month.
The major problem is time. Almost everyone at work is working 50-60 hour weeks already (including me), and we're completely slammed with work that has to get done. I have programming experience, and I have a good idea of how it all needs to get done, but I just don't have even remotely enough time to re-learn syntax and put together a program.
quote:Just an observation: this is why contract programmers exist.
Dag, In one month we'd save a whole ton of time. Unfortunately, we already have too few people and too many clients (we've doubled our client base in the last 9 months and are still skyrocketing), so what time we have gets spent doing support and writing reports (which our clients require as a part of FDIC reporting standards, so we can't just shut it down for a month to automate it).