another script query (perl?)

[Richard Lyons <richard@the-place.net>]

Hi, all you script wizards.

I thought this would be easy, but I haven't found anything to crib
from...

I need a script to read a text file (actually tex) and parse lines of a
table that may or may not span newline characters in the file.
Basically, there are lines of the form

   {some text} & {some more text} & {text c} & {text d} \\

where the braces are only for clarity and do not occur in the files, and
where the bits of text may include whitespace which may include newline
characters. There may also be escaped ampersands in the text ('\&'), and
the text fragments may be empty.

I suspect perl may be the way forward.  I need to be able to read each
file, parse each set of three ampersands with a double backslash
breaking it into four substrings, manipulate the substrings and write
the file anew.  A typical manipulation will be to take text c and copy
it to text d. I shall also try to strip leading and trailing whitespace
to tidy up the file.

Any and all pointers will be gratefully received!

-- 
richard