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more complex surfer data

When data gets complex

Hot on the heels of your success with the local surfing club, you’ve
just been contacted by the Regional Surfing Association (RSA) and
they want you to write a new program for them! RSA’s offering a
brand-new, state-of-the-art, epoxy resin surf board as payment...
once the program’s working to their satisfaction, of course. This is too good an
You’ve been wanting to try out an epoxy board for ages. The offer to turn down.
trouble is, they’re sooooo expensive and you’re a poor surfer. The
waves will have to wait (yet again). But, the thoughts of surfing an
epoxy board... now that’s worth waiting for.

So what does RSA’s data look like?

Currently, RSA’s data is stored in a text file using a proprietary
data format. For each surfer, there’s six pieces of data recorded on Here are the six pieces of data.
each line in the file.
Here’s what the data looks like:
Competition ID.
Name.
101;Johnny 'wave-boy' Jones;USA;8.32;Fish;21
Country.
102;Juan Martino;Spain;9.01;Gun;36
Average score.
103;Joseph 'smitty' Smyth;USA;8.85;Cruiser;18
Preferred board type.
104;Stacey O'Neill;Ireland;8.91;Malibu;22
Age.
105;Aideen 'board babe' Wu;Japan;8.65;Fish;24
106;Zack 'bonnie-lad' MacFadden;Scotland;7.82;Thruster;26
RSA's data is stored in
107;Aaron Valentino;Italy;8.98;Gun;19
each line, with a semicolon
separating each piece of data.

RSA has tried importing this data into their favorite spreadsheet
program, but that didn’t really work for them. RSA wants a
program that allows them to quickly find a surfers’ data based on
their Competition ID, then display the surfers’ details like this:

ID: 101
Name: Johnny 'wave-boy' Jones Each data item is displayed
Each data item Country: USA on its own line, which makes
is nicely labeled. Average: 8.32 it really easy to read (unlike

Board type: Fish the packed data file).
Age: 21

160 Chapter 5