I am using Perl to find all the PowerPC apps on my newly upgraded Snow Leopard laptop. (Love Perl 5.10 on Snow Leopard btw...)

system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType produces a list of all the applications on OS X. There is an XML output option, but I am working with the text version. system_profiler produces output in text like this:


    SystemUIServer:

      Version: 1.5.5
      Last Modified: 8/23/09 8:22 PM
      Kind: Universal
      Get Info String: SystemUIServer version 1.5.5, Copyright 2000-20
+09 Apple Computer, Inc.
      Location: /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemUIServer.app

    UserNotificationCenter:

      Version: 3.0.0
      Last Modified: 1/29/07 11:03 PM
      Kind: Universal
      Location: /System/Library/CoreServices/UserNotificationCenter.ap
+p

[download]
My perl script to parse this is: 
#!/usr/bin/perl

$apps_rep = `system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType 2> /dev/null`;

@apps_lines = split(/\n/,$apps_rep) ;

@apps=();

$count = @apps_lines ;

$i=$j=$k=$p=0;

while ($j<$count) {
    $apps[$i] .= $apps_lines[$j] ;
    $apps[$i] .= "\n" ;
    $i++ if ($apps_lines[$j]) =~ /^\s\s\s\s\S.*:$/;
    $j++;
    }
    
print "$i apps\n" ;

while($k<$i) {
    $_ = $apps[$k++] ;
    if (/Kind: PowerPC/s) {print; $p++} ;
    }    
    
print "$i applications, $p PowerPC applications\n\n";

[download]

Each application record is delimited by four spaces, the app name, and a colon at the end of the line. The regex /^\s\s\s\s\S.*:$/ captures this delimiter, but I cannot use the regex in split(/^\s\s\s\s\S.*:$/,$apps_rep);. Instead I have to read the output by lines, reassemble the lines into an array, and match /Kind: PowerPC/s on the resulting record.

Any wisdom on why I cannot use the split(/^\s\s\s\s\S.*:$/,$apps_rep);. call? The regex works, but not in split? Any better way to do this?

In reply to Is this the best regex? by drewk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.