How to open a (EDL)text file and parse it?

[tin3tin]

I been thinking about how to open a text file and how to parse it afterwards - things which would be useful for working with .edl or unsupported subtitle formats directly in avisynth script.

Some years ago avisynth strings seemed to be able to hold a limited number of characters, now it seems to be higher(anyone know how many?). Anyway this opens a possibility to work with huge scripts as strings which can be executed with the Eval command. So that part seems to be possible.

However I can't find a way to load/read/import a text file into a string. And then run through the string - until the end of the string - parsing it on a line by line basis.

Ex. script(not working):

My_edl_string=ImportString("My_edl_file.edl")

My_edl_script=""#global variable the final avisynth script

My_edl_script=ParseString(My_Parser, My_edl_string)# Run through string and apply the named function to a line at a time until the end of the string.

function My_Parser(string CurrentLine)
{
findstr(CurrentLine, "avi")=0 ? :My_edl_script=My_edl_script&"Directshowsource("&chr(34)&CurrentLine&chr(34)&")"#example adding of parser script to My_edl_script
}

Eval(My_edl_string)# And finally convert the the generated script into a clip.

Well as you can see I'm missing idears for ways to import textfiles into a string and also parse the string one line at the time until the end of the string.

I guess if I somehow could count the number of line breaks in the string I could make a blankclip with a length of that number and use animate to call the parser function for each line, but how would I get it to count the number of line breaks and also how would I get the parser function to find and parse the line with the animated frame corresponding number?