This may have been covered in the forums, but equally it may not have been. I did a search and read a lot of messages, but none of them seemed to answer my question. BTW - I had a look at the MUDDB plugin - but it's somewhat over my head at first glance, so before I try to turn it into something to do what I want, I figured to get some input here.
I've got a very large list of 'items' which I check on a regular basis to ascertain stock levels. The list displays 2 items per line and in the case of an item which has 0 'in stock' the item just doesn't show up - resulting in a very dynamic list. This makes that part of my job on the mux quite a pain <g>.
With up to 400 items, and 3 (or possibly 4) bits of information for each item the amount of data involved seems to mandate use of a database.
On top of that - this bolus of info comes at the result of one command - the output is up to a couple of screens worth in one hit. So however I deal with the info has to be pretty quick or I figure there's a risk of data ending up in the bit bucket one way or another. This would seem to imply using an array.
AND just to add another level of complexity - most of the items contain characters which are not permitted in variables - /'s, ()'s and/or spaces. I believe that VBScript can handle variables with all these 'aspects' - can someone confirm that for me?
The data IS fixed width, thank heavens, so I am hoping a single trigger will handle the vast majority of it (with a second trigger for those times when the last line only contains 1 item). I've come up with the regex to do it, so I figure it's all good there.
So - I ask the advice of those who have experience with MC ... what's the best approach to storing and manipulating this data?
I've got a very large list of 'items' which I check on a regular basis to ascertain stock levels. The list displays 2 items per line and in the case of an item which has 0 'in stock' the item just doesn't show up - resulting in a very dynamic list. This makes that part of my job on the mux quite a pain <g>.
With up to 400 items, and 3 (or possibly 4) bits of information for each item the amount of data involved seems to mandate use of a database.
On top of that - this bolus of info comes at the result of one command - the output is up to a couple of screens worth in one hit. So however I deal with the info has to be pretty quick or I figure there's a risk of data ending up in the bit bucket one way or another. This would seem to imply using an array.
AND just to add another level of complexity - most of the items contain characters which are not permitted in variables - /'s, ()'s and/or spaces. I believe that VBScript can handle variables with all these 'aspects' - can someone confirm that for me?
The data IS fixed width, thank heavens, so I am hoping a single trigger will handle the vast majority of it (with a second trigger for those times when the last line only contains 1 item). I've come up with the regex to do it, so I figure it's all good there.
So - I ask the advice of those who have experience with MC ... what's the best approach to storing and manipulating this data?