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I have data of the form:

X 1.213 'String Field With Lots of Spaces' 8.123
Y 2.43  'String Field With Lots of Spaces' 8.123
Z 4.83  'String Field With Lots of Spaces' 8.123

I'm trying to import it using the builtin "Table" format (or anything else that would work). Problem is, my field delimiter, a space, can occur within my text delimiters, as the above shows. Setting "FieldDelimiters"->" " and "TextDelimiters"->"'" does not do the trick. Is this possible or do I have to roll my own importer?

The data is a 2D array. The problem in reality is a little more complicated, in that I have two types of text delimiters, ' and ", and one can contain the other. And so a string can be of the form 'String "With" Lots" of Quotes' or "String 'With' Lots' of Quotes". I don't a priori know the type of entries in a column, their ordering, or their widths. I.e. everything has to be inferred on the fly.

Note I am not asking for code to do this from scratch: I can do it myself. I'm just wondering if the builtin importers support this.

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  • $\begingroup$ you should show a fully "complicated" example. Do you know the structure? (symbol,number,string,number) $\endgroup$ – george2079 Nov 8 '16 at 0:18
  • $\begingroup$ I updated it with some additional comments. I don't know the structure a priori. It has to be inferred, but the "Table" importer can usually do that. $\endgroup$ – Mohammed AlQuraishi Nov 8 '16 at 13:06
  • $\begingroup$ Import[file, "Table", "TextDelimiters" -> "'"] works for the first example.. $\endgroup$ – george2079 Nov 8 '16 at 15:12
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You can Import as "Text". Then use ImportString and RegularExpression to parse. Finally, ToExpression to convert the numbers. It is bit of a run around. I guess this could be considered rolling your own importer.

With

str = "X 1.213 'String \"Field\" With \"Lots of\" Spaces' 8.123
  Y 2.43 \"String Field 'With' Lots 'of Spaces'\" 8.123
  Z 4.83 'String Field With Lots of Spaces' 8.123
  A 4.83 \"String Field With Lots of Spaces\" 8.123";

Updated for not knowing the types in each column.

StringCases[
  RegularExpression["((\"|')[^\\2]+?\\2)|([[:alpha:]])|(\\d+(\\.\\d+)?)"] :> 
   If["$4" != "", ToExpression@"$0", "$0"]]@StringSplit[str, "\n"]

{{"X", 1.213, "'String \"Field\" With \"Lots of\" Spaces'", 8.123}, 
 {"Y", 2.43, "\"String Field 'With' Lots 'of Spaces'\"", 8.123}, 
 {"Z", 4.83, "'String Field With Lots of Spaces'", 8.123}, 
 {"A", 4.83, "\"String Field With Lots of Spaces\"", 8.123}}

Hope this helps.

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This gets 2 out of three lines right:

ImportString[

"X 1.213 'String Field \"With\" Lots of Spaces' 8.123
Y 2.43  \"String Field 'With' Lots of Spaces\" 8.123
Y 2.43  \"string 1 ' \" 'string 2 \" '"

, "Table", "TextDelimiters" -> {"'", "\""}] // MatrixForm

enter image description here

as you see if you are really general you end up with ambiguities. Most likely you need to import as "Lines" and work with string expressions.

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