FTWinston.com http://ftwinston.com Here be Winstons Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:57:55 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 String functions http://ftwinston.com/2011/string-functions http://ftwinston.com/2011/string-functions#comments Thu, 10 Feb 2011 15:45:20 +0000 Winston http://ftwinston.com/?p=13 Read more »

]]> In my job, I regularly have to manipulate, and extract data from, large xml files and large sql queries. Sometimes its a “remove first 10 chars from 100 lines” situation, or a “find all the lines that don’t contain any of these strings,” or just I want to do a find and replace on a string that involves newline characters.

I slowly learned what programs let you find and replace based on tabs, newline characters etc, and which didn’t. I didn’t have a one-stop shop for such things.

One day, the scale of what I had to do was so big that it was quicker to make a program to do it than to do it manually. I designed it to be easily extendable, so that I could easily add other functions to it, and StringFuncs was born.

Currently, it incorporates 45 seperate functions – some of them are commonplace (eg Find), others are common but with a twist (Find and Replace with multiline input, Find and Replace in files), and others are obscure enough that you’d likely never think of them until you need them (given two sets of strings, remove all strings that aren’t in both lists, or remove all strings that are in both lists).

Its a small exe written in C#, and requiring .NET 2.0 to run. Its saved my ass on several occasions, and has helpful little tooltips that explain every function. You can download it here, I hope it proves useful!

]]> http://ftwinston.com/2011/string-functions/feed 0 SQLite interface http://ftwinston.com/2011/sqlite-interface http://ftwinston.com/2011/sqlite-interface#comments Mon, 10 Jan 2011 17:46:36 +0000 Winston http://ftwinston.com/?p=56 Read more »

]]> Though I’ve now largely moved away from the project, Modular Combat servers used SQLite databases for storing persistant player information. I wanted an easy way to be able to query and edit these databases from my desktop, and didn’t find one to hand.

So, with the help of the System.Data.SQLite dll, this cheap-and-cheerful database interface program was born. Point it at a SQLite database file, and you can browse, query and edit your data. Think of it like a (thoroughly) stripped down version of SQL Server Management Studio, but for SQLite.

You can download it here, if you’re so inclined. I hope you find it useful!

]]> http://ftwinston.com/2011/sqlite-interface/feed 0