Best Programming Language for Analyzing Hand Histories?

[12AX7]

Hi All,
I was wondering, if I want to collect information from hand histories, what's the best language to do it with?

Since the is PC based, I'll have to learn the language from scratch, so bear that in mind.

Also, anyone know how these real time analyzers like PokerSpy get thier data?

I was thinking, just as a test, to write something that would show me the two cards I have to run to the hand history to see. So I'd need a way to do that in real time, or at least as soon as the data is available in the hand history file.

Being unfamiliar with PC/Windows API's I'm not sure what's out there. (Mainframe guy here.)

I was thinking Perl is the way to go, but not really sure what else there is.

[tinhat]

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Hi All,
I was wondering, if I want to collect information from hand histories, what's the best language to do it with?

[/ QUOTE ]

For text processing, perl; hands down (IMO). I run a perl debugger and full Info from within emacs; can't imagine doing it any other way. But I use *NIX so maybe there are some windows consideration(s) I'm unaware of...

Mike

If you have Poker Tracker (a must, imo) and set it up to use a Postgres database, then SQL will probably get you there the quickest.

[just2pimp]

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If you have Poker Tracker (a must, imo) and set it up to use a Postgres database, then SQL will probably get you there the quickest.

[/ QUOTE ]

this will only work after the hand has been imported. As far as I know poker tracker doesnt import incomplete hand which I think is what the op wanted, so he could test and see his hole cards as soon as possible

[MrMoo]

Any language will be able to do this. The best language is going to be the one which you are most capable of programming in.

[SheridanCat]

As someone else said, whatever you're comfortable in is best. I like Perl, but that's just me. For someone who is learning the language from scratch, consider Python.

The high level languages, Perl/Python/Ruby, all sport regular expression engines that make parsing of text files simple once you get used to the regular expression syntax. Any basic "learning" book on these languages will give you the basic for regex also.

Regards,

T

[pokergrader]

I just used C++ with a regular expression library and it not only easy but also pretty damn fast.

[12AX7]

OK, concensus seems to be "the specific language is not important, but a text parsing oriented on is best".

So where are you folks getting the data in real time from?