README

	ffe - Flat File Extractor

  Copyright (C) 2006-2026 Timo Savinen

  ffe is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
  the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
  (at your option) any later version.

  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
  GNU General Public License for more details.

  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
  Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA

Overview
========

  ffe is a command-line tool for extracting, filtering, and transforming
  data from text and binary flat files. Key capabilities include:

  - Fixed-length, separated/delimited (CSV, TSV), and binary structures.
  - Multi-record files (headers, body records, trailers).
  - Flexible templated output (XML, JSON, SQL, custom delimiter).
  - Expression-based filtering (=, !, <, >, ^, ~, #, ?).
  - Built-in data anonymization (GDPR/PCI-DSS compliant).
  - External filter programs and hash-based lookup tables.
  - Automatic file structure guessing.

Documentation
=============

  Comprehensive documentation is available in several formats:
  - Markdown reference: README.md and doc/ffe.md
  - Man page: man ffe (doc/ffe.1)
  - GNU Texinfo manual: info ffe (doc/ffe.texi / doc/ffe.html)

Installation
============

  Building from a release package:

    ./configure
    make
    make check
    make install

  Building from git repository (Autotools required):

    autoreconf -is
    ./configure
    make
    make check
    make install

Comments and bug reports are welcome:

	Timo Savinen <tjsa@iki.fi>