The following task concerns data that came from a pollution monitoring station with twenty-four instruments monitoring twenty-four aspects of pollution in the air. Periodically a record is added to the file, each record being a line of 49 fields separated by white-space, which can be one or more space or tab characters.

The fields (from the left) are:

 DATESTAMP [ VALUEn FLAGn ] * 24

i.e. a datestamp followed by twenty-four repetitions of a floating-point instrument value and that instrument's associated integer flag. Flag values are >= 1 if the instrument is working and < 1 if there is some problem with it, in which case that instrument's value should be ignored.

A sample from the full data file readings.txt, which is also used in the Text processing/1 task, follows:

Data is no longer available at that link. Zipped mirror available here

1991-03-30	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1
1991-03-31	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	20.000	1	20.000	1	20.000	1	35.000	1	50.000	1	60.000	1	40.000	1	30.000	1	30.000	1	30.000	1	25.000	1	20.000	1	20.000	1	20.000	1	20.000	1	20.000	1	35.000	1
1991-03-31	40.000	1	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2	0.000	-2
1991-04-01	0.000	-2	13.000	1	16.000	1	21.000	1	24.000	1	22.000	1	20.000	1	18.000	1	29.000	1	44.000	1	50.000	1	43.000	1	38.000	1	27.000	1	27.000	1	24.000	1	23.000	1	18.000	1	12.000	1	13.000	1	14.000	1	15.000	1	13.000	1	10.000	1
1991-04-02	8.000	1	9.000	1	11.000	1	12.000	1	12.000	1	12.000	1	27.000	1	26.000	1	27.000	1	33.000	1	32.000	1	31.000	1	29.000	1	31.000	1	25.000	1	25.000	1	24.000	1	21.000	1	17.000	1	14.000	1	15.000	1	12.000	1	12.000	1	10.000	1
1991-04-03	10.000	1	9.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1	9.000	1	10.000	1	15.000	1	24.000	1	28.000	1	24.000	1	18.000	1	14.000	1	12.000	1	13.000	1	14.000	1	15.000	1	14.000	1	15.000	1	13.000	1	13.000	1	13.000	1	12.000	1	10.000	1	10.000	1

Task

 Confirm the general field format of the file.
 Identify any DATESTAMPs that are duplicated.
 Report the number of records that have good readings for all instruments.


$handle = fopen("readings.txt", "rb");
$missformcount = 0;
$totalcount = 0;
$dates = array();
while (!feof($handle)) {
    $buffer = fgets($handle);
	$line = preg_replace('/\s+/',' ',$buffer);
	$line = explode(' ',trim($line));
	$datepattern = '/^\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}$/';
	$valpattern = '/^\d+\.{1}\d{3}$/';
	$flagpattern = '/^[1-9]{1}$/';
 
	if(count($line) != 49) $missformcount++;
	if(!preg_match($datepattern,$line[0],$check)) $missformcount++;
	else $dates[$totalcount+1] = $check[0];
 
	$errcount = 0;
	for($i=1;$i<count($line);$i++){
		if($i%2!=0){
			if(!preg_match($valpattern,$line[$i],$check)) $errcount++;
		}else{
			if(!preg_match($flagpattern,$line[$i],$check)) $errcount++;
		}
	}
	if($errcount != 0) $missformcount++;
	$totalcount++;
}
fclose ($handle);
$good = $totalcount - $missformcount;
$duplicates = array_diff_key( $dates , array_unique( $dates ));
echo 'Valid records ' . $good . ' of ' . $totalcount . ' total<br>';
echo 'Duplicates : <br>';
foreach ($duplicates as $key => $val){
	echo $val . ' at Line : ' . $key . '<br>';
}