Help needed saving text members to TAB delimited txt file

Question

I have 7 text memebrs each containing several lines of text
that were pulled in and sorted from a TAB delimited text file.
What I'd like to know is, is there any way to convert those
text members back into the TAB delimited format from which they
came? I'd like to be able to pull in the data, let it be edited to
some extent, then saved back out..... and I'm not too sure how to
go about it.
Example of txt file:
ID_No Name Age
1 Phil 26
2 Sam 34
3 Mary 21
They're then sorted in to text files of ID_No, Name, and Age,
with the lists of the relevent items in each.
Like.....
ID_No
1
2
3
Name
Phil
Sam
Mary
Age
26
34
21
Certain lines of these text members change, depending on what
the user selects. I'd like to put these sections back in their
original TAB delimited format, but with any changed data replacing
the old, so next ime the app is opened the new data is pulled in
from the txt file.
I know I'm probably going about this the wrong way, but it's
the only way I know so far lol
Any ideas?

Answer 1

global filex, idlst, namelst, agelst
on readtabline (str)
tmpstr = ""
y = 1
repeat with x = 1 to the number of chars in str do
if str.char[x] = tab then
case y of
1 : idlst.add (tmpstr)
2 : namelst.add (tmpstr)
3 : agelst.add (tmpstr)
end case
tmpstr = ""
y = y + 1
else
tmpstr = tmpstr & str.char[x]
end if
end repeat
agelst.add (tmpstr)
end
on exitFrame me
idlst = [] --set up some lists to hold that data we read in
namelst = []
agelst = []
filex = new (xtra "fileio")
filex.openfile ("t.txt", 1)
indata = filex.readfile() -- read the data in
filex.closefile()
filex = void
repeat with x = 1 to the number of lines in indata do
readtabline(indata.line[x]) --seprate it into its diffrent
elements
end repeat
-- you now have your data sorted in to three list of id, age
and name
-- so you would now do what ever editing you wanted to do
--now to write it out to a new file
filex = new (xtra "fileio")
filex.createfile (the moviepath & "tout.txt")
filex.openfile (the moviepath & "tout.txt", 2)
repeat with x = 1 to idlst.count() do
filex.writestring (idlst[x] & tab & namelst[x] &
tab & agelst[x] & return)
end repeat
filex.closefile()
end
I tested this on your exact scenario and it worked a brezze
hope it helps
Regards
David