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.


filename = "readings.txt"
io.input( filename )
 
dates = {}
duplicated, bad_format = {}, {}
num_good_records, lines_total = 0, 0
 
while true do
    line = io.read( "*line" )
    if line == nil then break end
 
    lines_total = lines_total + 1
 
    date = string.match( line, "%d+%-%d+%-%d+" )
    if dates[date] ~= nil then
        duplicated[#duplicated+1] = date
    end    
    dates[date] = 1
 
    count_pairs, bad_values = 0, false
    for v, w in string.gmatch( line, "%s(%d+[%.%d+]*)%s(%-?%d)" ) do        
        count_pairs = count_pairs + 1        
        if tonumber(w) <= 0 then 
            bad_values = true 
        end        
    end
    if count_pairs ~= 24 then 
        bad_format[#bad_format+1] = date
    end
    if not bad_values then
        num_good_records = num_good_records + 1
    end
end
 
print( "Lines read:", lines_total )
print( "Valid records: ", num_good_records )
print( "Duplicate dates:" )
for i = 1, #duplicated do
    print( "   ", duplicated[i] )
end
print( "Bad format:" )
for i = 1, #bad_format do
    print( "   ", bad_format[i] )
end