String Parsing and Formatting

Learning Outcomes

After completing these module, you should be able to:

• Describe how strings are stored in a computer
• Define the terms string, character, and ASCII
• Customize the formatting of numbers and put them into strings so they are easy to read
• Write out text files

Applications

Most of the data we see in natural resource applications is actually stored as text or "Strings" inside a computer. The spreadsheet data, emails, and even this web page are stored as text. There are a huge number of programming challenges that require the ability to create formatted text strings. Many of these include writing out the strings into text files. This includes:

• Writing out data from real-time data logging stations to make the data available on the web
• Converting spreadsheet data from one format to another. This is extremely common and includes:
  • Converting common names to scientific names
  • Converting coordinate formats like Degree, Minute, Second to more computer-friendly forms (and back again).
  • Converting date formats
  • Converting units
• Creating "synthetic" data as you just did in the previous assignments except by putting it in a text file. These data are used for testing out enterprise-level GIS systems (big systems) and new statistical methods.