T-Rex is an independently developed Delphi component for parsing textfiles.
Parsing is a task that is needed in lots of applications: data conversion, rule-based email handlers, little languages, in fact anywhere that input data has a recognizable pattern, but isn't quite as regular or as patterned as normal computer programs are used to.
T-Rex is a component that does all of the pattern recognition for you. It gives you the full power of awk's pattern-action style parsing, slotted into Delphi's event-handler paradigm.If don't know awk, don't worry! You don't need to know awk to use the component.
T-Rex offers a single nonvisual component, TRex, which scans a specified input file, parses it for matches against the regular expressions you specify, and triggers events when matches are found. Pattern recognition is a Delphi event. You specify the patterns you're looking for in TRex.MatchPattern, and write an event handler to respond to the OnMatch event.
T-Rex includes a comprehensive helpfile that includes a tutorial on regular expressions for non-awk programmers, and a quick-start table of equivalents for awk programmers.
This version of the T-Rex package supports Delphi 1, 2, 3 and 4.