On Sat, Mar 31, 2007 at 04:31:56AM +0900, Stephen Smith wrote:
> So I've cleaned up the regular expression, and I like the simplicity of the
> upack message.
> 
> But I think that the format Harry and Gary suggested clearly represents the
> pattern I'm matching.
> 
> Since the pattern may change, and/or we may get other data dumps from this
> supplier in the future, I think keeping it represented clearly in one place
> will help with maintenance.

Which could be a constant at the top of the source:

  LINE_PATTERN = /^(...)(..)(....)/

Then later on in your code you can say:

  record << LINE_PATTERN.match(line).captures.join(',') << "\n"

Regards,

Brian.