My perl skills are not up to par for this job.
I have two years worth of arrest lists that I would like users to be able to search through. I have been toying with a grep/awk script that works but is insufficient.
The format can be found by viewing the current arrest list at:
http://www.co.fairfax.va.us/ps/police/reports/Arrest.txt

Basically I would like users to be able to search by any field (Last name, date, charge, etc) and limit output to something like 50 lines.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

- Cary (admin)

I can help you out if you want. hit me up.

Maybe you should stick the data into a database and create a simple app to do searching. That would probably be the most efficient way instead of trying to parse through the file every time. It would probably be less than two hours of work to have a fully-functional gui search app with sorting and everything.

Considering that the text file appears to be mostly for the last month, using a database will allow you to import new data as it is available, while keeping the historical data as well.

in my experience, php is faster development wise. im rather skilled with php (im a freelance php coder) and could help. however, at this time im busy with university classes. i was thinking that datamining(getting the whole DB) would be better as you could add many new features.

Gravis

unfairfax (AT) adaptivetime [d0t] com

Ummm you think maybe you might have some privacy concerns offering this to everyone on the net?

what are you talking about?

this info was harvested from a county web site...

it was already on the web, you moron

The same rstidman we know and love?

"STIDMAN ","ROBERT ","E","026"
"02/13/2005","FAIL OBEY HWY SIGN
"02/17/2005","FAIL OBEY HWY SIGN
"10/14/2004","LIC PLATE IMPRO FASTND OR COVERED
"10/14/2004","DRIVE-OL RVKD/SUSP
"10/14/2004","HOV VIOLATION

And not a lawyer, privacy is dead. The terrorists have already won. If by terrorists one means the sprawling invasion by government into every aspect of one's life. Have y'all seen that Real ID Act shit? Going to create a national database with everyone's drivers license and other info. I'm sure that'll be secure. And they'll probably need perl coders too. (trying to make my rant relevant to the thread).

I would use PHP and stick the data in a simple mysql database. PHP is a pretty quick way of developing and it is powerful. www.php.net