Would it be smart to use a txt as some sort of database.

[BSCode266]

Hey everyone,

Right now i am making a program for children which are physically challenged. The purpose of this program is to have children express feelings by playing. So in this game i will need alot of objects out of the real life but also fictional ones. About 100 objects for now. I have made up a menu-structure so that this can be fully operated with just 2 buttons. Because of this i had to group objects together in categories. Every object or category has a String for the name, a String for the picture path and a String linking it to the next object or category. What i have done is put this in a text file with the following format:

@CategoryA Name Path NextB
@CategoryB Name Path NextC
@CategoryA Name Path NextC
@CategoryC Name Path NextO

What i am doing is reading each line and putting these four "words" in to an array. Making it multi dimensional and rebuilding the array each time when a category needs to be displayed in the menu.

Now i got the following question: Is this ok? Is this solution "neat" enough? Is it ok for me to use a text file like this or should i try some different ways? if so how?

Thanks in advance for all your tips,

BSCode266

P.S. I am not asking for code, just tips.

[JosAH]

Now i got the following question: Is this ok? Is this solution "neat" enough? Is it ok for me to use a text file like this or should i try some different ways? if so how?

The solution is fine as long as you have to deal with at most, say, a couple of
thousand things. I personally carry an old implementation around that implements
something much simpler: a map of string tuples: "key=value", i.e.given a key
I can retrieve a value quickly. Over the years a little *ahem* framework has been
built around it all that takes care of abstacting the actual loading and saving
of those maps. A few utility/convenience functions take care of the rest of it all.
Very nice for configuration/initialization purposes. Nowadays I even do my
I18N and L10N stuff with the same old code.

kind regards,

Jos

[BSCode266]

Ah okey, thank you once again Jos. I just wanted to know what i was doing was acceptable. :D

BSCode266