Data Parse Free Edition

Despite its fun name and happy colors, Parse-O-Matic Free Edition is not a friendly, automated file conversion tool. Parse-O-Matic is a tool for programmers who want to make complex changes to a file and want to learn a new scripting language to do so.

Luckily, the language itself is straightforward and supports conventions such as arrays and regular expressions. It also offers many ways to find, compare, and alter data, including the capability to compare strings, numbers, lengths, and patterns. Parse-O-Matic comes with an enormous, detailed user manual in addition to many example scripts, from simple to advanced. Once you get the hang of writing POM scripts, you will probably be very pleased with the breadth of the input and output formats this program supports. You can input text and hex files as well as data from the Windows Clipboard. Supported output formats include CSV files, HTML and XML, the Clipboard, and many others. A log file keeps track of the conversions you perform. The Parse-O-Matic interface is plain but functional, allowing you to load a file and a script and to designate an output file. All of the magic happens in the scripting, however; for assistance, look to the program's Help file as well as the detailed instructional manual, which clocks in at more than 100 pages.

To access the Parse-O-Matic Free Edition, you must first register and obtain a trial code. The Free Edition does not support some Advanced scripting commands. The program is a powerful data-processing utility, but only experienced programmers--or those eager to learn--will be able to use this program in any meaningful way.