I'm trying to process the text output from a program where the output format keeps changing. I've tried using a format string and unpack() but this is getting unwieldy now that I have a few formats to deal with.

Not including the ">" and "<" characters, example data strings are: 

>SS  21   PL 2#3  PV  51.3 CL #110 +0 RL 126' SA 106 DS 93<     ...(i)
>SS  21   PL 2#3  PVa51.3 CT^ 110 +0 RL126, SA 106 DS 93<       ...(ii
+)
>SS  21   PL 2#3  PV   51.3 CL #110 +0 RL 126' SA 106 DS 93<    ...(ii
+i)

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For subsequent processing, I'd prefer to end-up with the format shown in (iii).

I'm thinking along the lines of using some sort of regex but I just can't get my head around the silly things. Maybe I can do the 'extraction' of the fields one by one or perhaps I can do it all in one hit, I don't know. Performance level isn't a huge priority, as most of the programs that need to do this run as overnight batch jobs.

I guess the sort of thing I'm looking for is something like:

(@items) = MAGIC($buf);

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...after which I can glean the following info:

SS  21       => SS = 21

PL=2#3       => SP = 2     ...could be m.n, m.n#, m#n, m#n#
                SP# = yes
                LP = 3
                LP# = no

PVa51.3      => SP vote = a51  ...could be x.y
                LP vote = 3

CT^ 110 + 0  => CT = 110
                CT# = yes
                Rot state = "+"
                Rot value = 0

RL126,       => RL = 126
                flag1 = true ...shown by , or '
                flag2 = no   ...shown by "

SA 106 DS 93 => SA = 106
                DS for SA = 93

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Apologies for the cryptic/variable descriptions -- some of the ways the software formats its output is a little scatter-brained IMO(!)

I'd appreciate any suggestions on how I might attack the problem.

Thanks a heap.

In reply to Parsing a Variable Format String by ozboomer

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