[GRASS5] v.in.ascii updates

[Hamish]

> Hamish wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I'm looking to do some v.in.ascii updates, I thought I'd trawl for
> > comments first.. most deal with format=point mode.
> > 
> > 
> > Fairly straight forward updates:
> > 
> >  + update to use G_getl2() to make MacOS9 ascii import work.

done. (point mode only)


> >  + add skip= option to skip any header lines when format=point
> >    (e.g. column headings in cvs file)
> > 
> >  + add a -s flag to write those skipped header lines to the map's
> >    meta-data hist file (v.info -h).
> 
> I think that you can simply write that to history without complicating
> the module with new flag?

good point, done. (point mode only)

 
> > Debatable updates:
> > 
> >  ? skip any line starting with a '#' in input file.
> >    (could silently ignore data..??)

done & documented in help page. (point mode only?)

 
> >  ? skip blank lines in input file.
> >    (currently extra newlines at EOF break import of points)
> 
> User must be warn if there are errors in the file, empty line may be 
> error in input. There should be probably a flag for shuch skipping.

not done. I'd like to ignore blank lines if they happen at end of file,
but don't see an easy way of doing that. I agree that blank lines mid-
file is an error.

 
> Maybe it should be done in a GUI? Normal GRASS user can use
> cat file | grap -v "^$" | grep -v "#"
> ?

I think that's a pretty serious definition of "Normal GRASS user".

 
> >  ? strip "quotes" from both ends of varchar input.

TODO.


> >  ? rename format=standard to format=grass as format=point is
> >  default,
> >    so standard mode is non-standard. Confusing! I'll fix any
> >    scripts/.
> 
> ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN! The module options and behaviour MUST NOT change
> during the 6.x line. That applies to all modules and all developers 
> without exceptions.

right. left as is.



Thanks to all for comments, they helped.

Hash (#) comments and skip= are for points mode only right now. Worth
putting in standard mode too? (skip doesn't make much sense there, but
might be a good way to write stuff to the history file?)


Please report any problems.

Please report if the massive input points memory leak is fixed/same/
worse. (e.g. LIDAR)

Mac people please report if .csv files saved in Excel-for-OSX work.



Hamish