Difficulty developing a search method

[kanin247]

To Whom It May Concern:
I am having some difficulty with the following: I am trying to develop a search engine for .dat files on my computer. Each day, a record of the amount of watts on a power line is taken each hour and at the end of the day the data is compiled into a .dat file. The data in the file is organized by date, time, line, and watts (although, no labels are shown and they are separated by spaces). What I am trying to do is create a searching method that would allow the user to compare results over a range of time. So if the user wanted the watts on line B at 3pm every wednesday for the past 3 months, then the program would search the .dat files and out the results on the screen (in an empty text box). Ideally, I am trying to get away from opening each file manually (they are quite large, 30MB each) and having to look for my search criteria and record the data.

If anyone could assist me in any way, I would greatly appreciate it. Or if you could send me a link as to where I can find some examples related to my problem, that would be a great help as well. Also, is JavaScript the best way to go about this problem? Or is another language better to use?

Thank you for your time.

kanin

 

[trollacious]

What you need is something in conjunction with Windows Scripting Host, and JScript and VBScript both work about equally well. JScript does objects much nicer, if you're an OO programmer, but otherwise they're pretty much the same.