1. A method of processing a text file comprising: in a computer system having at least a processor and a memory, retrieving the text file; displaying the text file and a tree structure showing processing commands; and performing a set of visual editing operations to extract given portions of the text file while discarding other text, characters or white space, the displayed tree structure updated to include all processing commands representative of the visual editing operations used to parse the text file, the set of visual editing operations including a first operation that splits off a fragment of the text file.
2. The method of claim 1 further comprising previewing results of the editing operations using the displayed processing commands in the tree structure.