hello all,
in my program I want to parse several flatfiles. Depending on the source (where these files come from originally) a parsing procedure can involve only a single file, or several files (different or same format), or a zipfile with several files (different or same format).
My problem is that I don't want to bother the parser with the I/O stuff - check for the existence of the files, open the streams. In some cases one InputStream would be sufficient, in other cases I seem to need several, and in case of a zipfile I would need a ZipInputStream, or I would need to uncompress the file first.
Now, I had a new idea: what if the program zips all the sourcefiles to appropriate bundles - depending on the source target. Thus, the different parsers would all get just a ZipInputStream. Sure, then they will have to bother with uncompressing, but at least the existence of the files would have been checked before.
Am I totally misguided by this idea? Does the extra compressing mean a big overhead in performance, or would it even gain some time? (At the moment the files are located inside the unix file system or at least in a mounted fs tree where the program will run.)
Any comments on the idea or new suggestions
would be very welcome!
Thank you
Chantal
