Re: another script query (perl?)
On Fri, 7 Sep 2007 15:04:50 +0100
Richard Lyons <richard@the-place.net> wrote:
> 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!
Take a look at the perl Text::ParseWords module 'man
text::parsewords'). It may do what you want, depending on your needs
with respect to quoting and escaping.
> richard
Celejar
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