#!/bin/perl -w use strict; use XML::Twig; # create the regexp for date, this should be improved my $month = qr/(?:(?:Jan|Feb|Mar|Apr|May|Jun|Jul|Aug|Sep|Oct|Nov|Dec)\.?)/; my $day = qr/(?:(?:[0-2]?[0-9]|30|31)(?:st|nd|th)?)/; my $year = qr/(?:,?\s*\d+)?/; my $date= qr/($month $day$year)/; # this could probably be improved too! my $number= qr/(\d{2,})/; while( ) { chomp; # create the un-tagged XML my $t= XML::Twig->new(); # XML::Parser::Expat:::xml_escape just replaces & by &, # > by < etc... $t->parse( "". XML::Parser::Expat:::xml_escape( 1, $_) . ""); # mark the dates $t->root->mark( $date, 'date'); # mark the numbers, foreach my $elt ($t->descendants( '#PCDATA')) { #skip if in date next if( $elt->in_context( 'date')); $elt->mark( $number, 'number'); } # output $t->print; print "\n"; } __DATA__ On Oct. 21, the Dow Jones rose to 10043 points On May 1st 2001, 12 people were working in France