Re: [OT] Bash Script Help

[Almut Behrens <almut_behrens@gmx.net>]

On Mon, May 23, 2005 at 04:17:44PM -0500, Colin Ingram wrote:
> (...)
> 
> this creates a file that looks like this:
> 00:00.000, 3.24557e+007
> 00:02.510, 3.23482e+007
> 00:05.007, 3.24578e+007
> 00:07.507, 2.77091e+007
> ---snip---
> 
> I now need to covert the "elapse time" column from the string format 
> "hours:min:sec" to a column containing just seconds.  I am unsure how to 
> do this.  Can I use command substitution in a sed substitute command?

You could pipe the output of your script through the following perl
command:

  ... | perl -pe 's/^(\d+):(\d+):(\d+)/$1*60**2 + $2*60 + $3/e'

in case the time string represents "hours:min:sec".
If it's "min:sec.msec" (looks like it to me...), then it'd be

  ... | perl -pe 's/^(\d+):([\d.]+)/$1*60 + $2/e'

The s///e option requests command subtitution, where the value can be
any perl code, the result of which will be the replacement string.

I'm not saying it cannot be done in sed, I just don't know how -- from
the top of my head.  And it'd probably not be easier... :)

Almut