Creating a certain program
Hello everyone,
I hope this is the correct plattform to present my problem. Currently, I have no clue about C++, yet I want to write a certain program that would be very helpful at work and at the same time would be a project that would allow me to learn C++.
I work in an engineering company and we often need to verify if certain materials (steels, plastics, etc.) are compatible with certain chemicals (so called materialcompatibility tests). Over the years, hundreds of such tests have been conducted in our labs and archived in our server, with no real order and it is hence very difficult to find a specific test.
My target is to write a program where I can enter a specific material number, name, etc. and it spits out the corresponding material test (e.g. a surface where I can clic on either a PDF, Word-file, etc.). In an ideal world, what would be even better is to implement a function where I could put the specific word-file of several materialcompatibility tests and compile them into one report.
My questions concerning this project:
- Is C++ the correct language to learn for this task?
- What should be the first steps?
- Do you have any recommandation for books, videos, etc. to learn the required skills?
Thanks in advance and sincerely,
Nerevarine
I hope this is the correct plattform to present my problem. Currently, I have no clue about C++, yet I want to write a certain program that would be very helpful at work and at the same time would be a project that would allow me to learn C++.
I work in an engineering company and we often need to verify if certain materials (steels, plastics, etc.) are compatible with certain chemicals (so called materialcompatibility tests). Over the years, hundreds of such tests have been conducted in our labs and archived in our server, with no real order and it is hence very difficult to find a specific test.
My target is to write a program where I can enter a specific material number, name, etc. and it spits out the corresponding material test (e.g. a surface where I can clic on either a PDF, Word-file, etc.). In an ideal world, what would be even better is to implement a function where I could put the specific word-file of several materialcompatibility tests and compile them into one report.
My questions concerning this project:
- Is C++ the correct language to learn for this task?
- What should be the first steps?
- Do you have any recommandation for books, videos, etc. to learn the required skills?
Thanks in advance and sincerely,
Nerevarine
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are you asking to index and search a ?hard drive or similar? full of documents and return the relevant document? Or something else, are you trying to actually use the content of the document to do something ?? I would highly recommend indexing/finding the documents as one task, and putting the results together as a second task. You can glue them together at the top level, but keep them distinct and you will have 2 useful tools (a good search tool and a good report generator).
C++ can do this, but I had to do this and used an out of the box freeware tool I found on the web (it may be defunct as this was decades ago, it was called namezu indexing I think). C++ is a general purpose language and it can compel a computer to do anything that a computer can do. It is not always the best choice for everything, though.
There is probably an out of the box solution similar to the above (if it no longer exists). I used that one because it could parse PDF files, where as some tools cannot. Beware: some pdfs have "pictures of text" instead of 'pure text' in their content and most tools do not perform OCR on the images to index the files.
Which is really just saying that the first step in writing software is to see if someone already did it. If they did, can you use it for your own needs? If not, why not, can you adapt? If not, then consider writing something new. I expect you can find a document search/index tool. From there, calling it and putting the results together in a report would be something c++ can do well.
some first steps would be to research the document finder idea, then work on getting set up to write c++ code. If this is windows, visual studio installed and set up, along with some plug ins to read a PDF would be a starting point. Visual already understands the word format (.doc) as it is a microsoft tool.
C++ can do this, but I had to do this and used an out of the box freeware tool I found on the web (it may be defunct as this was decades ago, it was called namezu indexing I think). C++ is a general purpose language and it can compel a computer to do anything that a computer can do. It is not always the best choice for everything, though.
There is probably an out of the box solution similar to the above (if it no longer exists). I used that one because it could parse PDF files, where as some tools cannot. Beware: some pdfs have "pictures of text" instead of 'pure text' in their content and most tools do not perform OCR on the images to index the files.
Which is really just saying that the first step in writing software is to see if someone already did it. If they did, can you use it for your own needs? If not, why not, can you adapt? If not, then consider writing something new. I expect you can find a document search/index tool. From there, calling it and putting the results together in a report would be something c++ can do well.
some first steps would be to research the document finder idea, then work on getting set up to write c++ code. If this is windows, visual studio installed and set up, along with some plug ins to read a PDF would be a starting point. Visual already understands the word format (.doc) as it is a microsoft tool.
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| Over the years, hundreds of such tests have been conducted in our labs and archived in our server, with no real order and it is hence very difficult to find a specific test. |
What format are these archives in? Are they Excel sheets, Word docs, text files, something else? And also, what is in common with all these tests (format-wise)? e.g. is the list of compatible chemicals always formatted the same way?
| My target is to write a program where I can enter a specific material number, name, etc. and it spits out the corresponding material test (e.g. a surface where I can clic on either a PDF, Word-file, etc.). |
What is a "surface"?
Yes, I believe you can do this with C++, but depending on exactly the needs, even something like an excel VBA macro might be viable (especially if you have data stored in excel sheets in a common format).
Last, you said you have no clue about C++, but do you have experience in any type of programming?
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Can you do it in c++, well yes.
But from what I read, have you looked at microsoft access..... (dont hate me here), if it excell sheets, word docs etc. and you just want a way to link between them then perhaps that may be an option.
I think you looking at creating some sort of database not so much a program. Yes c++ could do this but might not be what you looking for.
As for learning c++ this by sounds of things would be one very very hard task from the scope you wanting.
But from what I read, have you looked at microsoft access..... (dont hate me here), if it excell sheets, word docs etc. and you just want a way to link between them then perhaps that may be an option.
I think you looking at creating some sort of database not so much a program. Yes c++ could do this but might not be what you looking for.
As for learning c++ this by sounds of things would be one very very hard task from the scope you wanting.
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