Basically, I want to create a table in html, xml, or xslt; with any number of regular expressions; a script (Perl or Python) which reads each table row (regex and replacement); and performs the replacement on any file name, folder, or text file (e.g. css, php, html). For example, I often rename my mp3 (files); the folder holding the mp3 files; and replace these renamed values in a playlist/m3u/xml file.
The table should hold clean regular expressions with minimal escaping. The regular expressions would incorporate multiple lines and complex expressions (e.i. symbolic grouping, back referencing, negative lookahead). The table would serve as a preset file for any replacement task. It also contains short description column for each regular expression. The table could contain 1 to 1000 regular expressions; and the input file could have 1000 to ten thousand lines as well. SED would become messy here. I am just starting out with building the logic and pseudo-code. I am hoping for any examples where these libraries have been applied. Links and guides would help since I am just starting out with the language. I need suggestions and examples on reading input by line; managing large data sets; iterating through an xml/html structure; and various parsing techniques. I built a solution in VBScript and VBA, but it had several limitations like operating on one platform and did not have full Perl regular expression support. In addition, it is attached to an Access database. The solution would parse and add headers to the data. It would parse the data with the headers and insert it into a table. It had over fifteen modules for repetitive parsing tasks to build a importable data set. VBScript Regexes are not as powerful as Perl or even sed. This request is large, yet someone with command of the language could give guidance on the basic framework to kickstart my efforts. Basically, I need someone to say start here; then proceed to this function; then look into these libraries; so on. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
