Re: [xml-dev] XML representation of tab-delimited text files?

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com>]

For your survey tally, in this XSLT 2 conversion of TSV and CSV to XML:

  http://www.CraneDoftwrights.com/resources/#csv

... I chose the latter, that the B element be empty:

T:\ftemp>java -jar saxon9he.jar 
-it:{http://CraneSoftwrights.com/ns/parseTSV}start 
-xsl:..\Crane-ParseCSV-20130708-2010z\Crane-ParseTSV.xsl 
"filename=../ftemp/roger.txt" "record-name=Row"
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<result>
   <Row>
      <A>foo</A>
      <B/>
      <C>bar</C>
   </Row>
</result>

T:\ftemp>type roger.txt
A       B       C
foo             bar

T:\ftemp>

I elected to do it this way by deciding that the zero-length string 
between the end of A and the beginning of C was the value of B, not 
an indication of its absence.

From a downstream application's perspective, it doesn't need 
knowledge of a document model to know what is absent as all fields 
have values, which may be empty.  If the B element were absent, the 
downstream app would have to have foreknowledge of the possibility of 
the B element.  And that is fine.  But if every record had an empty 
string for the B element, then the downstream app wouldn't know that 
B was even possible.

I hope this is helpful.

. . . . . . . . Ken

At 2016-09-22 14:48 +0000, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> I have a tab-delimited text file. Here is one row of the file:
> A             B             C
> foo                         bar
> The value in field B is optional. In this particular row there is no 
> value for B so it is empty.
> I could represent the text file in XML by creating an element for 
> each field and then putting a wrapper element around the elements. 
> For an empty field I could represent that by omitting the element. 
> So here is one way to represent the row:
> <Row>
>    <A>foo</A>
>     <C>bar</C>
> </Row>
>
> Notice that I omitted the <B> element because the B field is empty.
>
> Alternatively, I could represent an empty field with an empty element:
>
> <Row>
>     <A>foo</A>
>     <B/>
>     <C>bar</C>
> </Row>
>
> Notice the empty <B> element.
>
> What other ways are there for representing the row? I am 
> particularly interested in seeing other ways that people represent 
> empty fields.  (There are probably an infinite number of ways that 
> the row could be represented. I am interested in the ways that the 
> row is commonly represented.)
>
> /Roger

--
Check our site for free XML, XSLT, XSL-FO and UBL developer resources |
Streaming hands-on XSLT/XPath 2 training @US$45: http://goo.gl/Dd9qBK |
Crane Softwrights Ltd. _ _ _ _ _ _ http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/x/ |
G Ken Holman _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ mailto:gkholman@CraneSoftwrights.com |
Google+ blog _ _ _ _ _ http://plus.google.com/+GKenHolman-Crane/posts |
Legal business disclaimers: _ _ http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/legal |