TonyJ -
I just got done writing a parser in CVI to "read" a word document.
I don't think there's a magic bullet.
I used regular expressions (see the toolslib\toolbox) which are available as an "instrument" (regexpr.fp).
Regular expressions are a powerful mechanism - there's a learning curve but if you're writing software for a living you should know these anyway,
CVI does offer some string manipulation routines. I like regexpr - they're found pretty much everywhere, and well worth knowing. You can re-use what you learn about them. With the NI string functions, yes, they may be quick and dirty but do they do everything you need? and there's nothing standard or portable about them.
You can also scan using sscanf and the various standard C format descriptors for text, numbers, etc..
I used a regular expression to locate the specific area in the text I was interested in and then scanned in the value ("%s" in the case of a text value. %s format descriptor skips leading whitespace, and stops scanning either on a max field width or first whitespace character found. If the scan fails you can detect this.
You can write to an Excel worksheet using the ActiveX interface, excelreport.fp, it's straightforward.
menchar
Message Edited by menchar on 11-03-2006 12:34 PM
