Replacing/deleting line in a text file

[Scot Robnett]

I have a delimited file that is formatted like this:

        Altech|[EMAIL PROTECTED]:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Specialties Steel Corp.
        |[EMAIL PROTECTED] Specialty Steel Corp.
        |[EMAIL PROTECTED]|[EMAIL PROTECTED]:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
        Starwood|[EMAIL PROTECTED] foods|[EMAIL PROTECTED]:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
        starwood|[EMAIL PROTECTED]:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
        Authentic Fitness Corp.|[EMAIL PROTECTED]


Basically that's one continuous line; there are no line breaks. Don't ask
me, I just inherited the file. The records are delimited by * and then each
individual record is split as company/email by a pipe | character. If more
than one person wants to track a particular company, their e-mail address is
appended to the first with a colon and split on same for processing.


My question is this: If I want to remove an e-mail address from the list
associated with one of the companies, as in deleting that address from the
flat file, how would I go about it?


Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Scot R.


The input is coming from a form that is generated by the data file itself
like so:


#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use CGI;
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);

$q      = new CGI;
$file   = '/path/to/file';

print $q->header;

open(TRACKFILE,"<$file") or die "Could not open datafile: $!";
while($line = <TRACKFILE>) {
 @entries = split(/\*/,$line);
}
close(TRACKFILE);

print <<FORM_ACTION;
<form action="trackdel.cgi" method="post">
<table border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1">
FORM_ACTION

foreach $entry(sort(@entries)) {
 chomp($entry);
 $entry =~ s/::/:/g; # this is just to clean up one
                           # entry that seems errant but I
                           # don't want to mess with it

 ($company,$address) = split(/\|/,$entry);
 if($address =~ /:/) {
  ($addy1,$addy2) = split(/:/,$address);
  print <<EOF;
  <tr>
  <td><input type="checkbox" name="deleteentry"
value="$company|$addy1|$addy2|*"></td>
  <td>$company</td>
  <td>$addy1,$addy2</td>
  </tr>
EOF
 }
 else {
  print <<EOF;
  <tr>
  <td><input type="checkbox" name="deleteentry"
value="$company|$address"></td>
  <td>$company</td>
  <td>$address</td>
  </tr>
EOF
 }
}

print <<END_OF_FORM;
</table>
<br><br>
<center><input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Delete highlighted
entry"></center>
</form>
</body>
</html>
END_OF_FORM




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