Scenario: I’m working on a rails app that will take data entry in the form of uploaded text-based files. I need to parse these files before importing the data. I can choose the file type uploaded to the app; the software (Microsoft Access) used by those uploading has several export options regarding file type.
While it may be insignificant, I was wondering if there is a specific file type that is most efficiently parsed. This question can be viewed as language-independent, I believe.
(While XML is commonly parsed, it is not a feasible file type for sake of this project.)
If it is something exported by Access, the easiest would be CSV; particularly since Ruby contains a CSV parser in the standard library. You will have to do some work determining the dialect of CSV (what it uses for delimiter, how it handles quotes); I don’t know how robust the ruby parser is with those issues, but you also should have some control from Microsoft Access.