I have the following problem to solve: I work with positional-encoded files. These files show characters at certain positions in the string. Each row is a record, and the meaning of a character in a row depends on its position. In order to debug and fix them I need to make sure about the cursor position on the current file line.
Most editors, including Notepad++, display the column position in the file. However, while helpful, I would like to make it simpler.
I want an editor to somway highlight character positions in my files.
Here is what I thought about: using Excel 2010 one-character-per-cell.
Ideally, if Excel allowed me to paste a text into a preformatted table with colours, borders and heading columns I would have solved my problem. But I must make sure Excel accepts a paste by inserting each character in a cell, going to the next row when a CRLF is found.
This is quite an XY problem and I hope I asked my question the best way
- Problem X: enhance readability of positional-encoded files
- Problem Y: given that Excel could be a good ally, how do I paste a whole file into one-cell-per-character with a single CTRL+V?
Example
Since real data is really complex to post in this question, a generic dataset can be expressed (in documentation) as follows:
- Each row makes a single record
- Character 0 is data type, alphanumeric
- Characters 1:8 are a last name
- Characters 9:15 are a first name
- Characters 16:30 are a phone number
- Characters 31:38 are a date of birth in yyyyMMdd format
- Filler characters are spaces
- Lines are terminated with CRLF
Example "valid" record (I'm typing it by hand)
0SMITH JOHN +13652145896 19780101\r\n
Following the Excel example, I could display this data in coloured columns and easily edit a datasheet with colour/borders guides
