[erlang-questions] string to tupple ?

[Richard O'Keefe]

On Jun 21, 2010, at 5:43 AM, info wrote:

> After a few manipulation with list, string, I broke my head with  
> this problem.
>
> I extract from a mysql database a list representing a list of  
> coordinates.
> The string is like this "(a,b),(c,d),(e,f) ......."

The obvious question is "WHY"?  This is not the way textbooks tell you
to structure data in a relational data base; E.F.Codd is spinning in
his grave.  (Of _course_ there are practical considerations that mean
you sometimes have to do non-ideal things, and "atomic" always meant
"atomic with respect to what the database needs to do with it",  
otherwise
we wouldn't have BLOBs.)

> I would like to transform this string in order to easily manipulate  
> each coordinate.
> What is the best representation in erlang ?

It depends entirely on what you are going to do with it.

> - a list of tupples : if yes how to transform it in [{a,b},{c,d}, 
> {e,f}, ....]

There is only one "p" in "tuple".

erl_scan:string("(1,2),(3,4)")
gives you this answer:
{ok,[{'(',1},
      {integer,1,1},
      {',',1},
      {integer,1,2},
      {')',1},
      {',',1},
      {'(',1},
      {integer,1,3},
      {',',1},
      {integer,1,4},
      {')',1}],
     1}

So
	string_to_pairs(String) ->
	    {ok,Tokens,_} = erl_scan:string(String),
	    unwrap([{',',1}|Tokens]).

	unwrap([{',',_},{'(',_},{_,_,X},{',',_},{_,_,Y},{')',_}|Tokens]) ->
	    [{X,Y} | unwrap(Tokens)];
	unwrap([]) ->
	    [].

is probably the easiest way.  This relies on the string
containing "(" ")" and "," as punctuation marks plus
numbers that look like Erlang integers {integer,_,X} or
floats {float,_,Y}.

> - other representations ?

The obvious one is a pair of lists of numbers.
There are lots of other possibilities, depending on
- what kind of numbers you are dealing with
- what you are going to do with them

For example, if you know the numbers are whole numbers,
the very simplest code would be
	[X || {integer,_,X} <- erl_scan:string(String)]
which would give you a list of integers.