[Tutor] processing a text file w/ OO?

[Michael]

Thanks, Alan. That's exactly the kind of explanation I was looking  
for. As this is pretty much a one-off project and the data  
transformations are pretty different for each field, I'll stick with  
the functional approach. The rule of thumb you mention is useful,  
too. I hadn't heard that before.

On Jan 23, 2006, at 2:53 AM, Alan Gauld wrote:

>> I'm processing a tab-delimited text file where I read in a file,   
>> perform a bunch of operations on the items, and then write them  
>> out  again to a fixed-width text file.
>> I've been doing this with a very functional approach:
>> Anyway, this all works fine. Not knowing much about OO, I'm  
>> wondering  if there's a way to approach this from an object- 
>> oriented  perspective. Is there anything to be gained? Or is this  
>> type of  problem best tackled with a functional approach?
>
> This is one of the types of problem where I personally don't try to  
> use objects too much. Where objects might be helpful is if you have  
> a number of similar but slightly different data records such that  
> the processing consists of lots of if/elif chains. In that case  
> identifying the type once and relying on polymorphism to deal with  
> the differences is useful. But if the records all have similar  
> processing then OOP will make the code bulkier, slower and not add  
> too much IMHO.
>
> OTOH if you were to write a lot of these kinds of applications OOP  
> might provide a higher level of code reuse between projects.... But  
> remember that the cost of reuse means that you need to reuse code 3 
> (*) or more times to make it economical!
>
> (*) Metrics suggest the actual figure varies between 3-10 times  
> depending on language, object complexity and level of generality.
>
> HTH,
>
> Alan G
> Author of the learn to program web tutor
> http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld
>
>