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rebolseekstructured-data

Is there finer granularity than LOAD/NEXT for reading structured data?

Imagine that I have a long file of Rebol-formatted data, with a million lines, that look something like

REBOL []

[
    [employee name: {Tony Romero} salary: $10,203.04]
    [employee name: {Marcus "Marco" Marcami} salary: default]
    [employee name: {Serena Derella} salary: ($10,000 + $203.04)]

...

    [employee name: {Stacey Christie} salary: (10% * $102,030.40)]
]

If the enclosing block wasn't there, I could use LOAD/NEXT to read through the employee items one at a time (as opposed to parsing the entire file into structured data with LOAD). Is there any way to do something similar if the enclosing block is there?

What if I wanted to go back to a previously visited item? Could there be a "structural seek"?

Is there a viable database solution that one could use for this kind of desire for Rebol-structured data, which might even permit random access insertions?

Solution

  • I recall, that it was you who proved, that this should be doable in PARSE? ;-)

    Nevertheless, to give you a useful answer: the code I wrote for the link text can be described exactly as parsing (in essence) REBOL not using the default LOAD/NEXT when needing something else. So, have a look, read the documentation, run the tests, write some tests, and if you have more questions, just ask.