What is the best file format to parse?

Posted by anxiety on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by anxiety
Published on 2010-05-06T21:45:02Z Indexed on 2010/05/06 21:48 UTC
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Filed under:

parse

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file-format

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efficiency

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text-parsing

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rails

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 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.)

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