Simple Drag-Drop Text File Manipulator

[Jelfish]

Hi

Sorry for the ambiguous title.

I am looking to write a program that, upon dragging and dropping a text file onto it in Windows, it will do some pre-determined manipulation to the text, like deleting a certain amount in the beginning, replacing spaces with tabs, etc.

If you couldn't guess, I'm working with a machine that outputs data in a difficult to use format with a lot of unneeded information. I want to be able to make a program that can quickly manipulate that data and get it into a form I can stick in Excel or Matlab. I've been doing it manually and it's a real pain, especially when I know a program could do it.

I've seen such programs before, but I don't know how to make them myself. I know C, Classic Fortran (70) and some C++, though I'm a bit rusty.

If anyone knows the easiest way to make something like this, or perhaps point me in the direction of instructions or even example code, I would most appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.

Jel

 

[robphy]

A script in Perl or Python might be the best for the text manipulation.
Usually, one invokes this on the command line. You'll have to install a Perl or Python package.

In Windows, you can choose to open some filetypes with programs of your choosing... in addition to the default application.

If you truly want drag and drop (as opposed to right-clicking and selecting the alternate application via "Open with..."), you can try to use something that provides you with some of those GUI features, like http://www.autohotkey.com/ or http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/, which could call the Perl or Python script.

There are surely other methods (e.g. Visual BASIC, VBscript, Java, Javascript, etc...).. but the above tools are free, easy (for me) to use, and useful for lots of other general purpose tasks. (Cygwin provides Perl and Python packages in a UNIX-like environment... but Cygwin requires a substantial installation and some setup. Cygwin is great!)

 

[Jelfish]

I actually have cygwin on my computer already so I might try it out. I've been considering learning Python. Thanks for the tips!

 

[robphy]

Since you have cygwin, you might also consider awk and sed. It really depends on the nature of your text manipulations.

I agree that this would be a great opportunity to learn some Python.

 

[larcener]

When you drop and drag an item into a program, doesn't it use that as an argument to that program?