I have a bunch of plain-text like this:
1 MILE, PACE, PURSE $1,100.
FILLIES & MARES N/W $541 L5 STARTS AE N/A $301 L5 & N/A $60 PS
IN 2015-16 DRAW INSIDE
Last
Horse HV PP 1/4 1/2 3/4 Stretch Finish Time 1/4 Driver Odds Trainer
7 Im A Debutant 7 7/9H 7/5T 5/2T 5/2H 1/3 2:03 31 C Macpherson 7.45 R Gass
3 M D Caseys Charm 3 2@/1H 3/1T 3/1H 3/1Q 2/3 2:03.3 32 Ma Campbell 3.20 S Ford
5 Lucksgottachange 5 1/1H 1/T 1/1Q 1/1 3/3 2:03.3 32.1 J Hughes 1.55* J Hughes
2 Gascoigne Dickie 2 4/4T 5/3Q 4@@/1T 2/1 4/3H 2:03.3 31.4 K Sorrie 30.10 K Sorrie
8 Avid Yankee 8 8/12 8/8 8/5 8/4Q 5/5 2:04 31.3 K Murphy 5.25 A Ramsay
1 Honor Roll 1 3/3 2@/T 2@/1Q 4/2Q 6/6 2:04.1 32.3 B Andrew 9.90 B Andrew
4 Julep Hanover 4 5/6Q 6@/4H 7@@/3T 6/3T 7/6 2:04.1 32 W Myers 19.05 W Myers
6 Putnams Snap 6 6/7T 4@/3 6@/3H 7/4 8/10 2:05 33 M Mcguigan 2.75 G Dunn
Time: 29.2, 1:00.3, 1:31.2, 2:03 (Temperature: -2, Condition: GD, Variant: 1)
taken from http://www.standardbredcanada.ca/racing/results/data/r0130chrtnn.dat
But in my case it's human-written and may contains extra/missing spaces, dots, etc
And I need to parse it into a data structure. What would be different program languages approach to that? Good libraries?
I'm mostly a python programmer, but looking towards learning new languages.
Also, I'd really love to see how strong-typed languages deal with this.