> I've been given the job of writing a CGI script to receive the data from a form and append it to a text file. Later, the text file will be analyzed using MS Access. My problem is escaping characters which are often used as delimiters in text-based importing formats, such as ' or " or \t or \n. Any of these could be legitimately entered by a user into the text fields of the form. I'd like to capture these, and not just discard them, and in such as way that they can be easily converted back into the original characters after importing into Access. > > Is there a standardized or commonly accepted way of doing this? > > I first looked at HTML::Entities, but it doesn't look as if it converts \t or \n. Otherwise, this would be a good choice. I also looked at Unicode::Strings, but it seemed as if this would convert the entire string to Unicode, which I don't know if Access accepts, or if this would even solve my problem. > > The form is an Adobe .pdf form with editable fields, which returns the data as an .fdf file. Don't think this is important, but you can learn more about it at http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/27f9a.htm. > > I tried searching CPAN on 'encoding' but that didn't seem to be the right term. > > Thanks for your help and advice. > > -Kevin >
If possible you should consider using a CSV formatting module, this will translate best into Access (which you should avoid completely if possible). Text::CSV or even DBI/D::CSV are excellent. These modules will allow you to setup your delimiters however you wish, and Access should support importing from them. helps? http://danconia.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response>
