将数据关联到文本文件

Question

I need a good way to the following:

I have several text files, I need to be able to associate to some lines other data

Eg

Text file:

Line1
Line2
...
...
Line98

Additional data:

Line1    |This is additional data
Line2    |associated with line1 till line2
...
...
Line98

I don't want to modify the text files, so I'm going to need to store this information in another file. Notice that the text files might change, so keeping track of the number of the lines isn't a safe way to do what I need.

Any suggestion?

Answer 1

If you cannot change the text file, one solution is to copy the text file, and modify the copy with the additional information. When someone modifies the original file, you can detect the changes, by noticing that not all the lines in the original file have information associated with it in your copy with the additional information.

But, really a better solution is to change the original file in some simple way that makes it easy to find the associated additional information. Like:

Line1 [INFO-1]
Line2 [INFO-2]
...
...
Line98 [INFO-98]

And in your other file, you would have

[INFO-1] Additional info associated with INFO-1 tag that
can continue on the next line if you want
[INFO-2] Additional info for INFO-2
...
[INFO-98] Additional info

Now, when someone changes the original file, a new line will not have the [INFO-#] tag, and changing a line with an existing [INFO-#] tag won't change the additional info associated with it.