# Class Parser.Tabular

Inheritance graph

Description

  This is a parser for line and block oriented data. It provides a flexible yet concise record-description language to parse character/column/delimiter-organised records.

See also

  Parser.LR, http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values, http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDIFACT

Method create

  `Parser.Tabular Parser.Tabular(`void`|`string`|`Stdio.File`|`Stdio.FILE` `input`, `void`|`array`|`mapping`|`string`|`Stdio.File`|`Stdio.FILE` `format`, `void`|`int` `verbose`)`

Description

  This function initialises the parser.

Parameter `input`

  The input stream or string.

Parameter `format`

  The format to be used (either precompiled or not). The format description language is documented under compile().

Parameter `verbose`

  If `>1`, it specifies the number of characters to display of the beginning of each record as a progress indicator. Special values are:

  ``-4`` | Turns on format debugging with visible mismatches.
  ``-3`` | Turns on format debugging with named field contents.
  ``-2`` | Turns on format debugging with field contents.
  ``-1`` | Turns on basic format debugging.
  ``0`` | Turns off verbosity. Default.
  ``1`` | Is the same as setting it to `70`.

See also

  compile(), setformat(), fetch()