At 10:54 -0400 5/21/06, Peter Tattersall wrote, in part: >Do you want to build by row or by column? Building by row is easy. It's not >much use for cases where you need to keep changing the number of columns, but >I use a search and replace process to convert single columns into >tab-delimited tables ordered by row using these strings > >Find: (.*)\r(.*)\r(.*)\r(.*)\r(.*)\r >Replace With: \1\t\2\t\3\t\4\t\5\r > >This works for lists of several thousand lines - in fact, for arbitrary length >lists, and for situations where the need is common but only involves a limited >number of columns I'd just save each version as a pattern.
Arbitrary is a pretty strong word in the context of BBEdit. Remember that BBEdit does need to read an entire file into memory, virtual or otherwise, before it can run that script. A perl script reading line by line would be appropriate for a truly long file or a continuous source of data that might originate in a voltmeter. The tab separators don't seem to answer the original poster's question. I think it turned out that he wanted a visually clean display of monospaced fonts for which the "columns" can have different widths. If the lines which are destined to become the first column are long and the others are short the tab characters are pretty much useless in BBEdit. Think of a listing of stock prices for which external reasons require that the spelled-out company names come first. DXF files are another example where the start of a new row - or command if you think that way - are identified by the lack of a leading space in a line of a /r/n terminated file. -- --> If it's not on fire it's a software problem. <-- -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ Have a feature request? Not sure the software's working correctly? If so, please send mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, not to the list. List FAQ: <http://www.barebones.com/support/lists/bbedit_talk.shtml> List archives: <http://www.listsearch.com/BBEditTalk.lasso> To unsubscribe, send mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
