Help needed in sorting songs

[Lakshman]

Many of you know that I have a database of thousands of lyrics. There are all listed under individual composer's names. I would like to generate an alphabetical file of all the lyrics. Short of sorting them manually, is there some way to accomplish this through any other process?
A master list would help trace songs when the starting words are not known and only some words of the pallavi, anupallvi or caraNa are remembered. Any help in this matter would be much appreciated. Thanks

[vgovindan]

Lakshmanji,
If you have all these in Excel format, then you can send it to me and I will convert these in any order you want.
If you have these in text format, then, if you can embed a separator (preferably comma) for each field of each record, then it can be converted to excel format.
Can you send me a sample of the file so that I can suggest more?

[Lakshman]

Thanks for the response. I think you are talking about sorting entries which I already have in Access format.
I am requesting help with complete lyrics. I can send you two or three files which you can try and sort and see if you succeed.. Thanks.

[ShrutiLaya]

It's not clear what exactly you want to do. If you just want to sort them based on the first word of the pallavi, that should be straightforward, but it won't do what you say you want - find songs if starting words are not known. If what you want is an ability to search, you'd be better off getting google desktop or site search. This will just take your search term and search all the song files (after initially indexing them, it goes really fast). Or you can go a step further and build a "Concordance", which will allow you to show all the songs containing a given term or terms (I don't know of any canned solution, but writing a simple script or program should be doable). So, for instance, you can locate all songs with the word Vinayaka.

I'd be glad to try and help, please send me the couple of files too.

- Sreenadh

[Pasupathy]

I think I understand what Lakshman wants; What ShrutiLaya suggests is what is needed.
Google Desktop Search or Site Search. Since Google Desktop has been discontinued , one needs either a place to get the old program or alternates . Some sites suggest :
http://google-desktop.en.softonic.com/
http://en.kioskea.net/download/download ... le-desktop
Lakshman can try one of these.

( I seem to have either Google Desktop or something equivalent....which enables me to search my files with words anywhere in my files .... ( I don't know what it is! ) Maybe it's an advanced Windows Search facility itself....
See
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/a ... sktop.html

or
http://toolbar.google.com/gds/gds_offer.html

( I have not used any of these...since I seem to have an equivalent search facility..)


If members can suggest good (free ) desktop search softwares for Lakshman to try, that will be great.
I don't think he need to do anything with his files.

[rajeshnat]

It's not clear what exactly you want to do. If you just want to sort them based on the first word of the pallavi, that should be straightforward, but it won't do what you say you want - find songs if starting words are not known. If what you want is an ability to search, you'd be better off getting google desktop or site search. This will just take your search term and search all the song files (after initially indexing them, it goes really fast). Or you can go a step further and build a "Concordance", which will allow you to show all the songs containing a given term or terms (I don't know of any canned solution, but writing a simple script or program should be doable). So, for instance, you can locate all songs with the word Vinayaka.

I'd be glad to try and help, please send me the couple of files too.

- Sreenadh

Sreenadh,
I am not sure if Lji is asking for a desktop solution where he quickly searches. If he is asking then google desktop would be the best . Can you elaborate what you call as concordance- is that a term to indicate something or is it a tool.

[ShrutiLaya]

Just to close the loop on this .. Lji has separate word documents for each composer, and in each document, full lyrics of each song are listed in alphabetical order. He would like to have a single document with all the lyrics from all such documents in alphabetical order.

I created a short PERL script which accomplishes this (at least for the test files he sent). Lji is in the process of trying it out now.

@rajeshnat I meant the English word "Concordance", see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordanc ... lishing%29 . Here is a concordance of Shakespeare's works http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/concordance