Need help, please help...

Munna · Sep 26, 2008

Hiya everyone. I'm having some trouble with the following problem. Please help.

Genealogy is the study of ancestry and family history. For many people genealogy has become a
serious hobby whereby they trace the history of their families going back for many years. The
information required comes from many sources including official birth, marriage and death records,
church records and inscriptions on grave headstones. There are many groups that dedicate much
time to the recording and cataloguing of this information. Some of these groups copy the
inscriptions on grave headstones. These headstones are found in graveyards which are areas of land
set aside for the burial of the dead.
This assignment is based on the problems that are currently being faced by groups that wish to
summarise the data on headstones in order to create a computer-based catalogue of information
about the people who are buried in particular locations.
Groups have transcribed hundreds of headstone inscriptions. Each inscription has been recorded as
the contents line in a text file by using Notepad. There is a separate text file for each graveyard; the
first line of the text file would define the location of that particular graveyard. The name of each
file also defines the location of the graveyard.
There is little or no uniformity of style with regard to such inscriptions. We can expect to see dates
but each stonemason (person who engraves the stone) would have had a preferred way of
representing them.
For example:
• 12th April 1867
• April 12th 1867
• April the 12th 1867
• 12th of April 1867
• 12-4-1867
• 12-4-67
• 12.4.1867
• 1845 – 1867
Some dates refer to deaths and some to births.
Of course there are names but, there may be more than one person buried in each grave. There may
be names of relatives or friends that are not buried there, but such information may still be useful.

Design, implement and test a Java class that will extract the required information from a headstone
inscription.
From a programming viewpoint this involves complex string manipulation with a little file
handling to get the inscription from the Text file. For each inscription it is required to display on the
computer screen, in tabular form, the Name, Death Date and Birth Date of each person buried under
the stone.

Here's some of the sample data we're required to work with:

In / memory of / WENDY-SARAH / SMITH 6th of March 1599/ and HENRY TODOR 28th of
January 1547/ Forever in our thoughts / love LIZ and HARRY /
In loving memory / of / JACK McDONALD /aged 3 days / 1799 / Jesus said suffer little /
children to come unto Me /
In / loving / memory of / BARRY H / BEAX-SMITH / 1798 – 1882 / PAT C / BEAX-SMITH /
1800 – 1896 /
/ In loving memory / of / SAUL SAM NOCKLEY / late of Shire hall / died Dec 19th 1801,
aged 71 years / also GERT NOCKLEY / wife of the above / died Oct 22nd 1811, aged 79
years / peace perfect peace /
Click to expand...

I've tried to tackle the problem in several ways, but no algorythm of mine has managed to extract allthe required information.

Please help as soon as you can, I'll be really, very grateful. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

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