Hi Perl-List!
Stuart Clemons wrote:
[...]
>
> Name: Joe Blow
> DataField1: xxxxx
> DateField1: 07/07/77
> DataField2: xxxxx
> DateField2: 12/07/03
>
> Name: Fi Doe
> DataField1: xxxxx
> DateField1: 08/08/88
> DataField2: xxxxx
> DateField2: 12/12/03
>
> etc.
>
> There is an empty line that separates each record. I need to extract the
> records that meet certain criteria. I would really like to know how to
> do this in Perl.
> (For a simple task like this, in the past, I would just import these
> records into a database and write a query to extract the records that I
> wanted.)
>
> I've actually thought a lot about the problem, but I haven't done any perl
> coding that would allow me to put my woeful perl ineptitude on public
> display in this forum. I hope to find the time to start on this problem
> in the next couple of days. As I'm certain to run into problems, I will
> then share my ineptitude while looking for proper guidance from the valued
> learned ones.
>
> Until then, here's what I was thinking to do. What I thought I would do
> is try to read each line of one record into an array or hash, then use a
> conditional to determine if that record meets the desired criteria. If it
> meets the criteria, write out this record to another file and then read
> in the next record. If the record doesn't meet the criteria, read in the
> next record. I would keep doing this until EOF.
Here's a simple version that writes matching records to STDOUT...
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
# sample patterns
my $DateField1 = '07/\d+/77'; # July 77
my $Name = "Doe\n"; # Lastname is "Doe"
$/ = ""; # treats empty line(s) as record terminator
while(<DATA>) {
if (m{DateField1:\s+$DateField1} ||
m{Name:.*$Name}) {
print;
}
}
--
Kevin Pfeiffer
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response>
