Thread: Extract data from a file

Hi All,
Im trying to accomplish the following task and would like some advice.

I have a file with some content I need to extract partial information that are found in a specific position. For instance in this file I have the following:

//SOME DATA BEFORE THE POINT I WANT TO EXTRACT

then at some point it starts the section where I want to get the data; it starts where it says !- === SHADING..etc

!- =========== SHADING:ZONE: DETAILED ===========
Shading:Zone: Detailed,
Shading Device1,
BUFFERSUD,
,
4,
0.2,
-0.8,
1.6,
0.8,
-0.8,
2.8,
0.8,
-0.0,
2.8,
0.2,
0.0,
1.6;
Shading:Zone: Detailed,
Shading Device2,
BUFFERSUD,
,
4,
0.8,
-0.8,
2.8,
2.06,
-0.81,
2.96,
2.0,
-0.0,
2.8,
0.8,
0.0,
2.8;

..... etc. etc..

Basically I want to store all numbers after the the 4. They are coordinates of some points. 12 altogether so 4 points. Most lilely I want to store them them in an array of length [3].
My trouble are
1) how do I start reading data from a specific point ? (basically after =========== SHADING:ZONE: DETAILED ===========)
2) How do I fetch data so that I select in a sequence only the 12 points (exclduing so the first 5 rows)
3) I need to repeat this until all sequence is ended. The sequence of the data I need to gather finish at a point where I have this string: !- =========== ALL OBJECTS IN CLASS: PEOPLE ===========)

How would you approach this?

You'll have to read that file line-by-line until you detect the start of the lines you want to acquire, and then add them to your program data structure. The file looks like a sequential text file, so you can't really 'start reading' at any particular place, you'll have to go from the start.