The phone directory at work is sent out as a Word document (why? I have _no idea_!?). I wrote this little perl script to grab phone numbers for me, it uses Text::Soundex. Due to the fact that I just export the word document to ASCII format, it's got a few quirks in it, that I've had a hard time representing with regex's. So, I ended up using a few .*'s in there and was wondering if some regex guru (Ovid? :^)) could show me the light. That and anyone that would like to take a poke at it, please feel free.

Here's the file format of the phone list 
NAME              EXT  RM#    ORG       NAME              EXT  RM#    ORG     
 -------------------------------------   --------------------------------------
 - A -                                   BASILE, YYYY      5555 1H08   IAMG    
 ABEND, YYYYYY     5555 2014   CE        BATES, YYYY       5555 4832   BT      
 ABRAMS, YYYYY     5555 C-07             BATHERSFIELD, YY  5555 B-39   CE      
 ADAMS, YYYY       5555 255    OTC       BAXTER, YYYY      5555 A-43           
 ADAMS, YYYY       5555 149    BT        BEAR, YYYYYY      5555 H42    ATO     
 ADAMS, YYYYYYY    5555 A-16             BEASLEY, YYY      5555 D-79           
 ADUAKA, YYYYYYYY  5555 A-52             BEATTY, YY        5555 4832   TAG     
 AHMED, YYYYYY     5555 C-63             BECHTLE, YYYY     5555 D-26           
 AHMED, C. YYYYYY  5555 D-69   SOMEU     BEDOYA, YYYYYYYY  5555        CE
As you can see, they use things like "- A -" to denote the start of an alphabetical section, which I've had a hard time with. Also, some folks have middle initials, some don't, some have an organization, some don't.
Here's the code: 
#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use Text::Soundex;

my $PHONE_LIST     =     "$ENV{HOME}/phone_list";
my %seen;
my $cntr;

if(@ARGV == 0 || $ARGV[0] eq '-?' || $ARGV[0] eq '-h') { 
    print "\nUsage: $0 <last name> ...\n\n";
    exit 1;
}

open(PL, "$PHONE_LIST") || die "Can't open $PHONE_LIST: $!";

while(<PL>) {
    foreach my $name (@ARGV) {
        $name =~ /\U$name/;
        my $code = soundex($name);
        my $column_one = my $column_two = $_;
        my $flag;

        $column_one =~ s/^\s-*\s*(\w+)\s*-*,*.*$/$1/g;
        $column_two =~ s/^\s\w+,\s.* (\w+),.*/$1/g; 

        if($column_one && soundex($column_one) eq $code) {
            $flag = 1;
        } elsif($column_two && soundex($column_two) eq $code) {
            $flag = 2;
        }

        if($flag) {
            $seen{$name}++; 

            if(++$cntr == 1) {
                printf("\n%-12s %-15s %-8s %-5s\n", 
                    "First", "Last", "Ext", "Rm#");
                print "=" x 43, "\n";
            }

            if($flag == 1) {
                s/^\s(\w+), (\w+)\s+(\w?)\s?(\d{4,10})\s+(\S+)\s*.*$/$
+2 $1 $3 $4 $5/g;
            } elsif($flag == 2) {
                s/^\s.*\s(\w+), (\w+)\s+(\w?)\s?(\d{4,10})\s+(\S*)\s+.
+*$/$2 $1 $3 $4 $5/g;
            }

            my ($fname, $lname, $m, $num, $room) = split(/ /);
            chomp($room);
            printf("%-10s %1s %-15s %-8d %-5s\n", 
                $fname, $m, $lname, $num, $room);
        }
    }
}

foreach my $name (@ARGV) {
    $name =~ /\U$name/;

    if(! exists($seen{$name})) {
        print "\nNot found: $name";
    }
}

print "\n";
close(PL);

[download]
This is really a quick hack, so it's not as clean as I'd like.

In reply to Need help with regex by BastardOperator

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