The matchfile is an standard text file that contains the played matches. The matches are to be written in the following way:
Ipswich-Norwich 5-0
The matchrow can contain blanks or tabs and a team name can be made out of several words:
Ipswich Town - Manchester Utd 3 - 0
The names of the teams can not be longer than 16 characters and can not
contain any hyphens, -. It's also important that teams have the exact same
name throughout the file. If you call a team "Manchester U" in
one place and "Man. Utd" in another they will be treated as two
different teams.
You can also put some other text before and after the match itself (although this information is not used):
Sat. May 6th 15:00 Ipswich Town - Manchester Utd 3 - 0 (2-0) ^^-at least two blanks or one tab here ^-at least one blank or one tab here
The text before the match can however not contain any hyphens, -.
Every match has to placed on a single row. The matchfile can also contain
rows that are not matchrows. The matches shall of course be placed in the
same order as they are played.
Some leagues use Sudden Death when matches end in a draw. If you want to use support for Sudden Death the first thing you need to do is to set the SuddenDeath-parameter. Then you have to specify which matches ended in Sudden Death. This is done by simply attaching the string 'SD' after the match. Like this:
Toronto Maple Leafs - Florida Panthers 5 - 4 SD ^-at least one blank or one tab here
If you want to you can also include match dates in the matchfile. The dates will be displayed in various places in TeamStats. It will however mean some further demands on the matchfile. If you don't want to use dates just ignore this section and follow the instructions of the matchfile in the section above.
In order to tell TeamStats to look for dates in the matchfile you have to use the parameter DateChar to specify what character is to be used as a date separator. The date separator is the character between the day and the month. In 6/5 the / is the separator and in 6.5 the . is the separator. Any character can be used as a separator. This is how you specify the separator:
<PARAM NAME=DateChar VALUE="/">If you want to use dates you have to specify a separator. If no separator is specified TeamStats will not look for dates. In the following examples / is used as a separator.
The dates are to be written in the following format: number separator number. For example: 6/5. I doesn't matter which comes first, the day or the month. So the example above could mean both May 6th or June 5th. TeamStats doesn't interpret the date in any way, it is just read in and then displayed in the same format. So as long as you are consistent you can use it in any way you like.
The dates should be written on their own rows and placed above the matches that were played on that date, like this:
17/8 Milan - Parma 2-2The daterow can also contain other text before and after the date (this information is not used):
Sunday 17/8 1997 ^----^----- at least one blank or tab here Milan - Parma 2-2You don't have to specify dates for every match. If no date is specified the match will get the same date as the previous match. So you can write like this:
17/8 Milan - Parma 2-2 Inter - Lazio 2-0 Juventus - Bologna 0-1 18/8 Roma - Sampdoria 1-1 Atlanta - Bari 2-1This is an example of how TeamStats looks when dates are used. And this is how the matchfile looks.