On 24/04/2012 18:37, Paul Clark wrote: > Hi All, > > I have a small project that is stumping me aside from using a > straight brute force. > > I am processing output from an accounting program that is producing > some sort of printer control for some 3rd party print processing. I > have several partial lines that have commands to "over write" the > line to create bold type. I need combine the lines: > > 1 Balance Due: > 0 Balance Due: $567.23 > 0 $567.23 Before Due > Date: > 0 Before Due Date: 06/15/12 > 0 06/15/12 > > So the output line should be: > > Balance Due: $567.23 Before Due Date: 06/15/12 > > > The problem is the lines can be variable so I cannot just use substr > to copy parts of lines. The brute force was I was going to use is to > just create an output array for the line and loop through each line > position by position and if the character was not a space, set that > position in the output array to the character in the input line. > > Any suggestions for a more elegant solution?
Hello Paul First of all, when starting a new thread on this list please create a new email instead of replying to an existing message. Otherwise your question appears to be threaded as a further comment on an old question. I imagine the output lines aren't as shown in your mail? I presume the text to be overwritten appears in the same character colums as in the preceding lines? Something more like 1 Balance Due: 0 Balance Due: $567.23 0 $567.23 Before Due Date: 0 Before Due Date: 06/15/12 0 06/15/12 I would use substr together with the predefined Perl arrays @- and @+ to overwrite a line buffer with the non-space substrings within each line. Read about the arrays at http://perldoc.perl.org/perlvar.html#Variables-related-to-regular-expressions Note that the optional fourth parameter of substr replaces the specified substring. This piece of code shows the idea. HTH, Rob use strict; use warnings; my $line; while (<DATA>) { s/\s+$//; my $short = length($_) - length($line); $line .= ' ' x $short if $short > 0; while (/(\S+)/g) { my $beg = $-[1]; my $len = $+[1] - $-[1]; substr $line, $beg, $len, $1; } } print $line; __DATA__ 1 Balance Due: 0 Balance Due: $567.23 0 $567.23 Before Due Date: 0 Before Due Date: 06/15/12 0 06/15/12 **OUTPUT** 0 Balance Due: $567.23 Before Due Date: 06/15/12 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org http://learn.perl.org/
