A Better Way To Do Ascii File Process?

[Cory]

I have a macro that will read a variable amount of variables in to be used

later in the macro. At the moment I'm writing each record to a CSV or a simple

text file then later doing a Text File Process or the ASCII File

Process if it has more than one value per record. However when the macro is

done I don't need it anymore and it needs to be deleted. It seems silly to write

48 names to a text file for a validation routine. In fact I normally accumulate

them in one variable and then write that variable to file when I'm all done thus

avoiding several writes. Is there a way to do this without writing to disk? I

imagine something like an ASCII File Process but where you can make the target a

variable instead of a file name.

[kevin]

You could accumulate the names in a variable and separate them with a character that will never appear as part of the names. Perhaps something like this:

 

Cory|Joe|Paul|Kevin

 

Then you would have to write a routine to parse the names out of the variable.

[Cory]

Yeah but I need it to work like the ASCII file process where it would plow thru each line popping the vars in there. I was considering something like you suggest but I was unsure how I would parse it out. I guess I could pump them in there like you suggest then have a routine that would not only read the first value but also delete it so as it came to the next iteration it would take the next in line. Hmmmm.... Now that could work! And if I want to do an ASCII like process I could have one character as a field deliminator and another character as a record deliminator. In effect it would be a simple repeat but would be giiven another level of process by virtue of the pattern of deliminators. In fact you could have very complex patterns.... This would work! I'll call it a Langolier algorithm! Bah ha ha!