split/combine as table

[monte]

Not sure on the best syntax here but what I'd like is something like this:

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split variable {by|with|using} primaryDelimiter and secondaryDelimiter as table

I'm using item for secondaryDelimiter and line for primaryDelimiter in my discussion for clarity...

What this would do is take the first line and use its items as keys in the second dimension of the array and for then each subsequent line would have an array index starting from 1. So the data:

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Greeting,Planet
Hello,Earth
Hello,Saturn

once split would be accessible as:

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theVariable[2]["Planet"] = "Saturn"

A possibly better alternative might be:

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split variable {by|with|using} primaryDelimiter and secondaryDelimiter as table [with keys keyList]

Here if no keyList is supplied then the multi-dimensional array would have a numbered array as the second dimension...

Anyone have any thoughts in this?

[monte]

Thinking on this some more and I definitely think the keysList way is the way to go because that would cover key ordering in combine.

[rkriesel]

If split by row as table gives

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theVariable[2]["Planet"] = "Saturn"

then split by column as table can give

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theVariable["Planet"][2] = "Saturn"

which could facilitate using Jan's MapReduce.

[monte]

Perhaps I missed something in the map reduce discussion? I'm not really sure how it's related.