This is the kind of thing that seems to cry out for use of the split command, if your data is reliably separated by a unique string that doesn't appear inside the column values. Once you've got an array, that is when I would apply a (comparatively more expensive and detailed) regex to the array elements I cared about, if it was still necessary.


No good deed goes unpunished. -- (attributed to) Oscar Wilde

In reply to Re: Capturing columnar data from a text file by ptum
in thread Capturing columnar data from a text file by rhxk

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