Re: [MacPerl] Columns

[Ann Galea Baron <agbaron@www.waldonet.net.mt>]

>123420010110010010101  (and so on this way => )
>234531111101100101010
>678940000010010111010
>340151010101110101010
>and so on...
>
>Now let's say the first four characters are a PIN number,
>the following two characters the subject's age, and so on.
>How can I read such a file split in (fixed) columns ?
>I would like to insert tabs at the end of each field, creating
>a tab-delimited text file.
>

This is  my solution:

I assume you are reading the text file through a filehandle: <F>

while (<F>) {
	$_ =~ s/(\d{4})(\d{2})(\d{15})/$1\t$2\t$3/;
	$fHolder .= $_;
}

The regular expression groups each line into three sets of 4, 2 and 15
digits respectively and then reconstructs the line with the tab character
between grouped sets. Each line thus processed is appended to the variable
$fHolder for further processing (or for writing out to disk).

Hope this helps. Happy New Year to all on the list.

Gauden Galea
http://www.synapse.net.mt