Re: [xml-dev] Tool converts records to XML

["C. M. Sperberg-McQueen" <cmsmcq@blackmesatech.com>]

Hans-Juergen Rennau <hrennau@yahoo.de> writes:

> Roger, I would find it interesting to compare an awk solution with an
> XQuery one, also considering aspects like clarity and
> extensibility. Especially interesting as the potential of XQuery for
> tool building is by and large ignored.

Agreed!

> ...
>
> PS. Example of an XQuery-based solution:
>
> declare variable $uri external;
> declare variable $sep external := '&#x9;'; 
> <document>{
>     let $lines := unparsed-text-lines($uri)
>     let $names := $lines => head() => tokenize($sep)
>     for $line in tail($lines) return
>     <row>{
>         for $field at $pos in tokenize($line, $sep) return
>             element {$names[$pos]} {$field}
>     }</row>
> }</document>

This is good (and should work anywhere), but after spending a little
time on my own CSV parsing routines I realized that in BaseX, the
simplest thing to do is just to call

    csv:parse(unparsed-text($uri), map { 'header': 'yes'})

That is for comma-separated values; I think for tab-separated values one
would have to specify an additional option.

I don't have time to check, but I have a dim recollection that eXist
also has a function for reading CSV.

-- 
C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
Black Mesa Technologies LLC
http://blackmesatech.com