[vox-tech] simple parsing of multiple-line records...?

[Bill Kendrick]

On Thu, Apr 21, 2005 at 11:20:39PM -0700, Dylan Beaudette wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> this might be a really simple question, but :
> 
> 
> i have a text file with multiple-line records in a format like this:
> 
> ----------------------------
> easting:      661674.9375
> 	northing:     4035004.0000
> 	elevation:         968.8617
> distance along surface:               15.9540
> 
> 	easting:      661683.7500
> 	northing:     4034946.7500
> 	elevation:         961.4768
> distance along surface:               58.4077
> -----------------------------

A silly way I can think of is to first convert all EOLs to some
special character (say, a "|"), then convert all double-|s to single EOLs.

Something like this in a shell:

  cat foo.txt | tr \\n \| | sed s/\|\|/\\n/g

If I tack a "| sed s/\\t//g" at the end and run your above input, I get this:

easting:661674.9375|northing:4035004.0000|elevation:968.8617|distance along surface:15.9540
easting:661683.7500|northing:4034946.7500|elevation:961.4768|distance along surface:58.4077|

Which seems a bit more reasonable to parse.  If the values are always in
the same place, hacking at it with 'cut' could even work:

  ... | tr \| : | cut -d ":" -f 2,4,6,8

Results in:

  661674.9375:4035004.0000:968.8617:15.9540
  661683.7500:4034946.7500:961.4768:58.4077


:)



Of course, the smarter folks around here will come up with a more
elegant solution, but I love trying to cram crazy problems into the
basic shell apps. :)

Good luck!  I hope I helped SOMEwhat! ;)


-- 
-bill!
bill at newbreedsoftware.com      Tonight's Forecast: Dark. Continued darkness
http://newbreedsoftware.com/   until widely scattered light in the morning.