On Fri, 21 May 2004 14:55:35 -0400 richard lyons <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I'm asking for a bit of advice here. > > I wish to convert a kaddressbook database to abook format saving as > many fields as possible. > [ ... ] > > I could probably do it in perl - but I've never really learned perl, > and would have to work from the manual. > Perl is a great language. I think it can solve many issues quickly, but it does appear large and overwhelming at first. > > I really do need to equip myself with a convenient scripting language > for all these day-to-day admin tasks, and I'd like it if it can do a > little maths for me at time too. Please advise me which manual to > open. > Until this past year, I used three primary tools in conjunction with the Bourne Shell for my "day-to-day admin tasks": sed, grep and awk. With these three tools you can manipulate text to your heart's content. In this case, if I didn't want to use perl, awk is a good choice. For example, echo "hanson,carlos,[EMAIL PROTECTED],123 street,somewhere,555-1234" | awk ' BEGIN { FS="," } { printf ("[%s]\n", NR) printf ("name=%s %s\n", $2, $1) printf ("email=%s\n", $3) printf ("address=%s\n", $4) printf ("city=%s\n", $5) printf ("phone=%s\n", $6) printf ("\n") }' but the equivalent in perl script is #!/usr/bin/perl my $count = 1; while (<>) { chomp; my @record = split(/,/); printf ("[%s]\n", $count++); printf ("name=%s %s\n", $record[1], $record[0]); printf ("email=%s\n", $record[2]); printf ("address=%s\n", $record[3]); printf ("city=%s\n", $record[4]); printf ("phone=%s\n", $record[5]); printf ("\n"); } If I was to do something quick on the command line, I would use sed, grep and awk. Otherwise, I try to use perl. Perl is a combination of those tools and more. Enjoy. -- Carlos Hanson Webmaster and Postmaster Tigard-Tualatin School District ph: 503.431.4053 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]