Jan Eden wrote:
> Hi,
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> >I have a text file with a records like:
> >
> >smith, James, Dr., 115 Fourth Street, Chicago, IL, 32012, $20.00:
> >[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> >and another text file with placeholders like:
> >
> >Hello $last_name, $first_name:
> >
> >I want to read the first textfile and update the second one.
> >
> >Any ideas!
>
> This is a very general question. Have you already tried something? Have your read an
> Introduction to Perl (O'Reilly's "Learning Perl" is highly recommended)?
>
> Basically, what you have is a data file and a template file. You should open the
> data file and read the data into a hash (using pattern matching), then merge the
> hash and the template file (replacing your placeholders), putting out a scalar
> variable for each set of data.
I would do it the other way around. I am guessing here that the OP wants to use the
second file as a tameplate, as you suggest also, but consider the use of a template.
He probably does not want to actually update the original, but to spawn personalized
copies for each customer/recipient record in the data file.
Since the text of the template is the material that would be repeated each time
through the loop, the text is what he should slurp. Then he can go through the
data-file record by record, making a personalized version from the template for each
one.
Of course I could be wrong--the OP might really want to modify the template itself.
In that case, he would first have to decide which record he would want to take the
values from
For the time being, though, I am assuming that he simply misstated the procdure. If
he has the template in memory as a concatenated string, he can substitute in the
proper variables for the place holders with each record
my $template_string = get_file_contents();
my $contact = {};
my $count = 0;
while (<DATA_FILE>) {
chomp;
($contact->{'last name'}, $contact->{'first name'} ...$conatact->{'current
balance'}) = split /,\s+/, $_;
(my $inerpolated_string = $template_string) =~ s/%(.*?)%/$contact->{$1}/g;
open(OUT_FILE, 'boiler_plate' . ++$count . '.txt'
print OUT_FILE $inerpolated_string;
}
This should work alright. Took a few rounds to get the typos out, but the following
worked from the command line:
my $template_string = 'Hello, %first name% %last name%, how are you';
my $contact = {};
my $count = 0;
while (<DATA>) {
chomp;
($contact->{'last name'}, $contact->{'first name'}) = split /,\s+/, $_;
(my $interpolated_string = $template_string) =~ s/%(.*?)%/$contact->{$1}/g;
open(OUT_FILE, '>boiler_plate' . ++$count . '.txt');
print OUT_FILE $interpolated_string;
}
__DATA__
Smith, John
Doe, Jack
The file rendered were:
boiler_plate1.txt
Hello, John Smith, how are you
boiler_plate2.txt
Hello, Jack Doe, how are you
Joseph
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