http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=257290

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I am attempting, to use perl to place text onto new lines. I have a tab delimited file which looks similar to this.

John Smith 25 May 2003 <job>Manager Clean-up
John Smith 25 May 2003 <job>Manager Clean-up <job>Manager Books
John Smith 25 May 2003 <job>Manager Clean-up <job>Manager Books <job>Manager Acounts

What I am trying to do is, where a 2nd, 3rd or more <job> appears, I want to place it onto a new line, but with the text up to the date with the information. The final output would look something like this.

John Smith 25 May 2003 <job>Manager Clean-up
John Smith 25 May 2003 <job>Manager Clean-up
John Smith 25 May 2003 <job>Manager Books

Can anybody help?

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

open (INPUT, "jobs.txt");
open (OUTPUT, ">newjobs.txt");

while ( <INPUT> ) {
my $TheLine = $_;

    while ($TheLine=~ [^\n]*##citation##[^\n]*##citation##[^\n]*##cita
+tion##[^\n]*/i)
    {
    $TheLine=~ /([^\n]*)##citation##([^\n]*)##citation##([^\n]*)##cita
+tion##([^\n]*)/$1\t$2\n$1\t$3\n$1\t$4/i;
    }
    while ($TheLine=~ /[^\n]*##citation##[^\n]*##citation##[^\n]*/i)
    {
    $TheLine=~ s/([^\n]*)##citation##([^\n]*)##citation##([^\n]*)/$1\t
+$2\n$1\t$3/i;
    }

print OUTPUT "$TheLine";

}
close INPUT;
close OUTPUT;

[download]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Placing text onto multiple lines
by vladb (Vicar) on May 11, 2003 at 22:31 UTC
    This works for me: 
    use strict;

while (<DATA>) {
  chomp();
  my ($first, @rest) = split "<job>";
  print "$first<job>$_\n" for @rest;
}

__DATA__
John Smith 25 May 2003 <job>Manager Clean-up
John Smith 25 May 2003 <job>Manager Clean-up <job>Manager Books
John Smith 25 May 2003 <job>Manager Clean-up <job>Manager Books <job>M
+anager Acounts

    [download]
    And output: 
    John Smith 25 May 2003 <job>Manager Clean-up
John Smith 25 May 2003 <job>Manager Clean-up
John Smith 25 May 2003 <job>Manager Books
John Smith 25 May 2003 <job>Manager Clean-up
John Smith 25 May 2003 <job>Manager Books
John Smith 25 May 2003 <job>Manager Acounts

    [download]


    _____________________
    "We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce
    the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true."

    Robert Wilensky, University of California

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Re: Placing text onto multiple lines
by pzbagel (Chaplain) on May 11, 2003 at 22:36 UTC

    I'm going to assume that every input line is comprised of a name and data and then 1 or more <job>s. 

    while(<INPUT>){
chomp;
($name,@jobs)=split /<job>/;
for $job (@jobs)
  {
    print OUTPUT "$name <job>$job\n";
  }
}

    [download]

    Good luck

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Re: Placing text onto multiple lines
by Limbic~Region (Chancellor) on May 11, 2003 at 22:33 UTC
    Anonymous Monk,
    This seems like what you want, but if not - say so and I will try something else: 

    #!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

open (INPUT,"jobs.txt") or die "Unable to open input : $!";
open (OUTPUT,"jobs.txt") or die "Unable to open output : $!";
select OUTPUT;
$\ = "\n";

while (<INPUT>) {
    chomp;
    my @fields = split /\t/;
    unless (@fields > 2) {
        print join "\t" , @fields;
    }
    else {
       my $firstfield = shift @fields;
       while (my $nextfield = shift @fields) {
           print $firstfield, "\t", $nextfield;
       }
    }
}
close INPUT;
close OUTPUT;

    [download]

    Cheers - L~R

    Update: Both vladb++ and pzbagel++ have simpler solutions than this. The only thing I would point out is you said tab delimited.

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