Hi Jeff,

thanks a lot for your detailed description. That was very helpfull to me.

It’s easier to read just numeric data, but reading mixed string and numeric values is certainly very doable.  Here’s an example using your data set.

! read data from file

numrows = 3
numcols = 5
DECLARE DARRAY, DOUBLE, 2, numrows, numcols
! read numeric data (note: strings are set to zero)
OPEN "test.dat"
FOR i, 1, numrows, 1
	FOR j, 1, numcols, 1
		READNEXT x 
		DARRAY(i,j) = x
	NEXT j
NEXT i
CLOSE 

! print results
FOR i, 1, numrows, 1
	FOR j, 1, numcols, 1
		PRINT DARRAY(i,j)
	NEXT j
NEXT i

! read strings from first part of each line
OPEN "test.dat"
READSTRING ROW1$
P1$ = $GETSTRING(ROW1$, 1)
READSTRING ROW2$
P2$ = $GETSTRING(ROW2$, 1)
READSTRING ROW3$
P3$ = $GETSTRING(ROW3$, 1)
CLOSE

PRINT P1$, "  ", DARRAY(1,2), "  ", DARRAY(1,3), "  ", DARRAY(1,4), "  ", DARRAY(1,5)
PRINT P2$, "  ", DARRAY(2,2), "  ", DARRAY(2,3), "  ", DARRAY(2,4), "  ", DARRAY(2,5)
PRINT P3$, "  ", DARRAY(3,2), "  ", DARRAY(3,3), "  ", DARRAY(3,4), "  ", DARRAY(3,5)

Here’s the output:

The ZPL keywords:  READ, READNEXT, READSKIP, & READSTRING offer various methods for getting data from files into the ZPL shell.