Programming Praxis

Welcome back, Jane!
We hope that you and all the members
of the Public family are constantly
reminding your neighbors there
on Maple Street to shop with us.
As usual, we will ship your order to
    Ms. Jane Q. Public
    600 Maple Street
    Your Town, Iowa 12345

Everybody hates form letters. But they are part of the computing universe, and today’s exercise asks you to print them. Input to the form letter generator comes in two parts. First, there is a schema that defines the letter to be written. Here is the schema for the letter shown above:

Welcome back, $1!
We hope that you and all the members
of the $0 family are constantly
reminding your neighbors there
on $5 to shop with us.
As usual, we will ship your order to
    $3 $1 $2. $0
    $4 $5
    $6, $7 $8

Variable text is identified as $n, where n is the field number from a database; although it’s not shown above, n can be larger than 9, extending right-ward until a non-digit is encountered. Also not shown above is the construct $$, which prints a literal dollar sign.

The data comes from a comma-separated values file, of the type we have previously encountered. In this case, records have nine fields: last name, first name, middle initial, title, street number, street name, city, state, and zip code. Here is a sample two-record data file:

Public,Jane,Q,Ms.,600,Maple Street,Your Town, Iowa,12345
Smith,John,Z,Dr.,1234,Main Street,Anytown,Missouri,63011

Your task is to write a program that takes a schema and a data file and writes a series of form letters. When you are finished, you are welcome to read or run a suggested solution, or to post your own solution or discuss the exercise in the comments below.

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