parse column from spreadsheet string

[jon_mcbee]

Is there an efficient way to parse a column from a tab delimited spreadsheet string?  Currently I turn the spreadsheet string into an array and operate on it, but my spreadsheet string is alphanumeric and I would prefer to parse as a string if possible.  Any thoughts?

Cheers!

[Norbert_B]

How often do you parse the array? does the content of the array stay the same each time you parse it?

Those questions are imho the ones to ask.
This is because transfer of spreadsheet-string into an array is already a parsing mechanism which seeks tabs and EOLs. But these are one byte each, so you dont have much time to spend for comparison.
If you are seeking something like "this is a very long text to parse", you will lose much time if you do it repeatedly on a long text (like spreadsheet-strings normally are!). You will be faster if you can reduce the number of strings to parse and the array is a good solution.
But if the spreadsheet string is changing before every parsing, you can leave out the transfer into an array and parse the spreadsheetstring directly....

hope this helps,
Norbert B.