Question

I am currently doing a small data structures project, and I am trying to get data on universities across the country; and then do some data manipulation with them. I have found this data here: http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/machine-learning-databases/university/university.data

BUT, the problem with this data is (and I quote from the website): “It is a LISP readable file with a few relevant functions at the end of the data file.” I plan on taking this data and saving it as a .txt file.

The file looks a bit like:

(def-instance Adelphi
      (state newyork)
      (control private)
      (no-of-students thous:5-10)
      (male:female ratio:30:70)
      (student:faculty ratio:15:1)
      (sat verbal 500)
      (sat math 475)
      (expenses thous$:7-10)
      (percent-financial-aid 60)
      (no-applicants thous:4-7)
      (percent-admittance 70)
      (percent-enrolled 40)
      (academics scale:1-5 2)
      (social scale:1-5 2)
      (quality-of-life scale:1-5 2)
      (academic-emphasis business-administration)
      (academic-emphasis biology))
(def-instance Arizona-State
      (state arizona)
      (control state)
      (no-of-students thous:20+)
      (male:female ratio:50:50)
      (student:faculty ratio:20:1)
      (sat verbal 450)
      (sat math 500)
      (expenses thous$:4-7)
      (percent-financial-aid 50)
      (no-applicants thous:17+)
      (percent-admittance 80)
      (percent-enrolled 60)
      (academics scale:1-5 3)
      (social scale:1-5 4)
      (quality-of-life scale:1-5 5)
      (academic-emphasis business-education)
      (academic-emphasis engineering)
      (academic-emphasis accounting)
      (academic-emphasis fine-arts))

      ......

The End Of the File:

(dfx def-instance (l)
  (tlet (instance (car l) f-list (cdr l))
    (cond ((or (null instance) (consp instance))
           (msg t instance " is not a valid instance name (must be an atom)"))
          (t (make:event instance)
             (push instance !instances)
             (:= (get instance 'features)
                 (tfor (f in f-list)
                   (when (cond ((or (atom f) (null (cdr f)))
                                (msg t f " is not a valid feature "
                                       "(must be a 2 or 3 item list)") nil)
                               ((consp (car f))
                                (msg t (car f) " is not a valid feature "
                                     "name (must be an atom)") nil)
                               ((and (cddr f) (consp (cadr f)))
                                (msg t (cadr f) " is not a valid feature "
                                     "role (must be an atom)") nil)
                               (t t)))
                   (save (cond ((equal (length f) 3)
                                (make:feature (car f) (cadr f) (caddr f)))
                               (t (make:feature (car f) 'value (cadr f)))))))
             instance))))

(set-if !instances nil)



(dex run-uniq-colleges (l n)
  (tfor (sc in l)
    (when (cond ((ge (length *events-added*) n))
                ((not (get sc 'duplicate))
                 (run-instance sc)
~                 (remprop sc 'features)
                 nil)
                (t (remprop sc 'features) nil)))
    (stop)))

The data I am mostly interested in is Number of students, Academic emphases, and School name.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You can work on/use a Lisp file parser, or you can ignore the language it’s written on and focus on the data. You mentioned you need:

• School name
• Number of students
• Academic emphases

You can grep the relevant keywords (def-instance, no-of-students, academic-emphasis), which would leave you with (based on your example):

(def-instance Adelphi
      (no-of-students thous:5-10)
      (academic-emphasis business-administration)
      (academic-emphasis biology))
(def-instance Arizona-State
      (no-of-students thous:20+)
      (academic-emphasis business-education)
      (academic-emphasis engineering)
      (academic-emphasis accounting)
      (academic-emphasis fine-arts))

Which simplifies writing a specific parser (def-instance is followed by the name, then all academic-emphasis and no-of-students before the next def-instance refer to the previously defined name)