Question

I am building a game in Visual Studio 2008 and in order to build levels, i will have two types of files (more than that actually but these two are the only ones important to my question) i need to parse. One will dictate the contents of a level and will look something like this:

LevelName = “Sample Level”

Object1Type = “CustomObject”

Object1File = “WideFloor_DF”

Object1Position = 600,600

Object2Type = “Circle”

Object2Position = 550, 500

Object2Mass = 5

etc.

The other will dictate the properties for custom objects, and look something like this:

Name = “Wide Floor”

Mass = 1

GeometryMap = “WideFloor_GM”

IsStatic = true

etc.

I’m not very familiar with regexes (read: i don’t like them because the look too much like line noise to easily understand) and i was wondering if there is an easier method than using tons of regexes?

edit: i knew i forgot something! i really hate xml files, so i would really prefer not to use them (waaaaaaaay too verbose for me).
edit 2: i like the format i’ve come up with and would prefer not to change.

Answer 1

What about using XML files? You can read and write them easily using XMLReader and XMLWriter objects, and you won’t have to deal with Regex at all.

<Level name="Sample Level">
   <Object type="CustomObject" file="WideFloor_DF" positionX="600" positionY="600" />
   <Object type="Circle" file="WideFloor_DF" positionX="500" positionY="500" mass="5" />
</Level>