asdfile 0.0.2

Flat file format for multi-tabular data storage using ASCII separator characters.

ASCII Separated Data

Flat file format for multi-tabular data storage using ASCII separator characters

Flat/Text file (e.g. comma-separated, tab-separated, fixed-width, etc.) is by far the most common file format used for tabular data by data analysts in any industry. Flat files store structured data using specific column/row separator like comma, newline and data qualifier characters like double quotation.
There are few major issues present in the existing flat file formats: The separator and qualifier characters are commonly present in the data itself which makes it difficult to parse the file. Also, multiple tables are not supported by most of the existing file formats.
.asd flat file format/structure eliminates above listed and other issues in existing flat file formats. The presented file format uses existing ASCII separator characters (which are almost obsolete considering present day usage and may not appear in actual data) instead of common characters like comma, tab, pipe, etc.
This improves the quality and efficiency of data processing and allows multi-tabular data in a single flat file. I have named it ASCII Separated Data (ASD) with .asd as file extension.

Characters used

DEC	OCT	HEX	BIN	Symbol	Description
1	1	01	00000001	SOH	Start of Heading
2	2	02	00000010	STX	Start of Text
3	3	03	00000011	ETX	End of Text
28	34	1C	00011100	FS	File Separator
29	35	1D	00011101	GS	Group Separator
30	36	1E	00011110	RS	Record Separator
31	37	1F	00011111	US	Unit Separator

Basic Structure of .asd file

[FILE GROUP LEVEL METADATA (only one in a single .asd file)]

[FILE LEVEL METADATA] [DATASET/TABLE LEVEL METADATA] [DATA TABLE SEPARATED BY (US) AND (RS)] [GROUP SEPARATOR CHARACTER (GS)] [DATASET/TABLE LEVEL METADATA] [DATA TABLE SEPARATED BY (US) AND (RS)]

[FILE SEPARATOR CHARACTER (FS)]

[FILE LEVEL METADATA] [DATASET/TABLE LEVEL METADATA] [DATA TABLE SEPARATED BY (US) AND (RS)] [GROUP SEPARATOR CHARACTER (GS)] [DATASET/TABLE LEVEL METADATA [DATA TABLE SEPARATED BY (US) AND (RS)] [GROUP SEPARATOR CHARACTER (GS)] [DATASET/TABLE LEVEL METADATA] [DATA TABLE SEPARATED BY (US) AND (RS)]

[FILE SEPARATOR CHARACTER (FS)]

[FILE LEVEL METADATA] [DATASET/TABLE LEVEL METADATA] [DATA TABLE SEPARATED BY (US) AND (RS)] [GROUP SEPARATOR CHARACTER (GS)] [DATASET/TABLE LEVEL METADATA] [DATA TABLE SEPARATED BY (US) AND (RS)]

• Note: newline characters are used for readability and will not appear in default .asd format

Installation

pip install asdfile

Usage

import asdfile as asd

Functions

• read_asd()
• write_asd()