Hi all. I'm not really a programmer, I just dabble. I've dabbled in a broad range of languages but never gotten serious about any of them.

I'm about to engage in a recreational project that involves taking an output file from a program and breaking it down, extract what I want from it, then compile it in a meaningful way. The file I'm working with is roughly 1 mb, the format is pretty standardized so I don't need to do a lot of creative linguistics or anything hard like that. I basically just need to take a txt file. Look for some cues, pull data based on those cues then move on down the file. Ideally I would take the data and build a comma delimitted spreadsheet, build and XML file or put it directly into some kind of database like object (access, MySQL....whatever else).

So can anyone point me to a programming language that is well suited for a beginner to do that kind of extraction and recompilation? I'm willing to invest time and effort.

I think PHP is the right language for you. Its not hard to learn the basics and there it alot of tutorials out there.

What languages have you used?

Thanks for the info Doc. It makes sense that the language used to drive tons of blogs and forums would be the right one for th job, not sure why I didn't think that way before. I haven't done a lot with php but I have worked through tutorial or two so it shouldn't be too steep of a learning curve.

As far as what languages have I used, I've used the typical HTML, CSS stuff. I've taken "intro" courses on C and C++ but nothing functional really comes out of those courses. I use VBA on at least a weekly basis. I've played in a couple others that aren't coming to mind right at the moment but that's most of it.

Thanks for the info. Based on your handle, I would imagine you will see me in the PHP section before too long.

Yep, there are others like Ruby but PHP is normally the other to start with. (i love PHP)
If it web browser based then C and C++ wont work... the experiance with a language is good tho.
Anyway come to the PHP section and post questions... it most likely will get answered.

Good Luck Mate,
Lex

PHP is very easy, also not hard to go OOP as PHP 5/6 has nice support for it.

thanks kjarli, I've started working on it slowly using PHP. This is going to be hard but the potential benefits are great.

Yeah but PHP need a webserver :/ (e.g. Apache)
But it always depend on your preferences ;)

Ye PHP needs a webserver... XAMPP is good, easy to setup and use

PHP 5/6
Is there a PHP6 out!?!?

Only snapshots at this moment.

http://snaps.php.net/

Yeah but PHP need a webserver :/ (e.g. Apache)
Ye PHP needs a webserver... XAMPP is good, easy to setup and use
You don't need a webserver to run PHP, you can run PHP from command line, just type in something like this:
php my_file_to_execute.php
and if you want to use php interactively, use this:
php -a
<?php
echo "Hello World!";
exit;

Is there a PHP6 out!?!?
Not yet, just be patient :P You can always download a snapshot (http://snaps.php.net/) of PHP6

The good news is that a webserver is not a problem, I have access to that.