Accessing/Searching a database

[VRay]

I am on mission here on something I don't know too much about. Any info or pointers anyone of you folks could give me would be greatly appreciated.

There is this service that ftp's a database of real estate listings to subscribers websites; this database is in a "Tab Delineated" format (tab delineated file?) which I understand is a very raw data format so it can be accessed anyhow on any system. Can anyone explain this format to me and suggest what I could use to search and access the info. My next move would be to get/create a similar database in this format, load it on my linux box (running apache) and experiment a bit.

Thanks, help or links would be great.

[chochem]

Hmm, I'm not quite sure I understand your question fully, but here's my best try. Ok, so there is a single file, that has all of these listings in a tab-delimited (each entry is separated with a tab) format. Now, you want to search the file to yank out some data? Well, I mean, you could use a regexp in vi or something if you just wanted to search through, or you could write a perl script. I would be happy to post a perl script, if you would explain the problem a bit more clearly (sorry, I'm being dense today).

[chochem]

Oh, and what do you want the output to be? On the screen, in another file?

[Strike]

A really good way of doing this would be with a Perl script. Of course, it's a bit beyond the scope of a single post to outline Perl, so maybe head on over to the Programming/Script Depot forum and ask around.

Perl homepage - http://www.perl.com
Perl mongers - http://www.perl.org