Rexx - Parse a CSV line (';' separator)

Question

I know that we can parse a CSV line ( ';' separator ) with something like that :

delim = ';'
myline="i;want;to;know;what;love;is"
parse var myline w1 (delim) w2 (delim) w3 (delim) w4 (delim) w5 (delim) w6 (delim) w7
say w1 w2 w3 w4 w5 w6 w7

I want to know if there is a way to simplify the iteration of the 'w# (delim)'in order to do something like :

parse var myline w1 (delim) w2 (delim) ... (delim) w6 (delim) w7
/* then we will have all w1 to w7 defined

I could do a function with some array to do that but is it possible natively on rexx, i was just wondering

Thanks

Answer 1

Sure, if what you really want is n variables named w1, w2, ... wn:

do i = 1 by 1 while myline <> ''
    parse var myline word (delim) myline
    interpret "w" || i "= word"
end

But the Rexx-y way to do this is using a "stem array":

delim = ';'
do i = 1 by 1 while myline <> ''
    parse var myline w.i (delim) myline
end
w.0 = i-1

or even:

do i = 1 by 1 while myline <> ''
    parse var myline w.i ';' myline
end
w.0 = i-1

When you're done, you have an array w. with it's count in w.0 and the n words in w.1, w.2, ... up through w.n. This is better because Rexx has special handling for the part following the .: you can use any variable, and its value will be used instead. So printing all those words is just:

do i = 1 to w.0
    say w.i
end

Or re-assembling them is just:

line = ""
do i = 1 to w.0
    line = line || w.i || ';'
end