#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my @lines = (
    'Bob Smith bsmith 00001234567 01/01/1986 00:00:00',
    'Mary Ann Doe mdoe 00001234568 01/01/1986 00:00:00 00001234563 01/
+01/1986 00:00:00',
    'Gilligan Q Smith gsmith 00001234569 01/01/1986 00:00:00');

foreach my $line (@lines) {
    $line =~ s/(\s[a-z]+\s0{4})/,$1/g;
    print "New line:\n'$line'\n";
}
[download]

If I were doing this on my own, I might look into split. I like split.

Split on the token (you know it's an n-digit number):

my ($user, $token, $login) = split(/\s(\d{11})\s/, $line, 2);
(my $username = $user) =~ s/\s(\w+)$//;        # untested construct
print "$username, claiming to be $user logged on with token $token, at
+ $login.\n";
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If you you can match on the case variation this works:

foreach (<>) {
        s/\s+(?=[a-z])/,/;
        s/\b([a-z]+)\s/$1,/;
        s/\b\s+\b(\d\d\/)/,$1/g;
        s/(:\d\d)\s\b/$1,/g;
}
[download]

It ain't purty but it works.

--
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)

my @lines = (
              'Bob Smith bsmith 00001234567 01/01/1986 00:00:00',
              'Mary Ann Doe mdoe 00001234568 01/01/1986 00:00:00 00001
+234563 01/01/1986 00:00:00',
              'Gilligan Q Smith gsmith 00001234569 01/01/1986 00:00:00
+');

foreach $line (@lines){
    $data = $line;
    $line =~ s/^(\D+)(.*)/$1/;
    $data =~ s/^(\D+)(.*)/$2/;
    $data =~ s/(\d+)\s(\w+)\s(\w+)/$line,$1,$2,$3,\n/g
}
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s|^(.*?)\s(\w+)\s(0000\d+)\s(\d+/\d+/\d+\s\d+:\d+:\d+)|$1,$2,$3,$4|;
s|\s(0000\d+)\s(\d+/\d+/\d+\s\d+:\d+:\d+)|,$1,$2|g;
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$mydata =~ s/([\w\s]+)\s([\w\d]+)\s(0000.*)/$1,$2,$3/g;
$mydata =~ s/(:\d{2})\s0000/$1,$2/g;
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#!/usr/bin/perl
# NODE34853.pl
# Assumptions: There are potentially any number of parts of a user's n
+ame.
# For example, "Bill Clinton" might be a user's name, but 
# "William Jefferson Clinton the Liar" might also be his name. 
# The user's name is next, which is always one word long. Might also h
+ave numbers
# in it, such as Bill69. 
# The data is currently in a single scalar (as though you read it from
+ a flat file).
# And, It's not clear what granularity you want the data to have. I'm 
+assuming
# that you want the user's name, his username, and the individual chun
+ks of login
# data. Do you also want to split up the login data? Your post didn't 
+say.
#
# Knowing what you want to do with this data afterwards would also hel
+p. If you want to 
# load this into a SQL database, then you'd probably want to do this a
+ bit differently.
# But, if your goal is just to comma-delimit the file so you can load 
+it into
# a spreadsheet, then this oughta do the trick. 
#
# This solution is really just a two line program with lots of comment
+s and some 
# stuff to setup the environment and print the results. 
# I hope it helps.
# --Mark
#


# This line just sets up the scalar variable you want to parse. 
# I'm assuming you have other methods of doing this (reading from 
# CSV, etc.)

$mydata = <<ENDDATA;
Bob Smith bsmith 00001234567 01/01/1986 00:00:00
Mary Ann Doe mdoe 00001234568 01/01/1986 00:00:01 00001234563 01/01/19
+86 00:00:02 00001234563 01/01/1986 00:00:03
Gilligan Q Smith gsmith 00001234569 01/01/1986 00:00:01 00001234569 01
+/01/1986 00:00:02
ENDDATA


# The purpose of this regex is just to split out the user's NAME, 
# USERNAME, and associated DATA. We're leaving the guts of the DATA al
+one for now.
$mydata =~ s/([\w\s]+)\s([\w\d]+)\s(0000.*)/$1,$2,$3/g;

#MyData temporarily looks like this:
#Bob Smith,bsmith,00001234567 01/01/1986 00:00:00
#Mary Ann Doe,mdoe,00001234568 01/01/1986 00:00:01 00001234563 01/01/1
+986 00:00:02 00001234563 01/01/1986 00:00:03
#Gilligan Q Smith,gsmith,00001234569 01/01/1986 00:00:01 00001234569 0
+1/01/1986 00:00:02

# Now, let's split up the DATA parts by looking for the space between 
+the :00 and 0000
$mydata =~ s/(:\d{2})\s0000/$1,$2/g;

print "All done. MyData now looks like this\n$mydata\n\n";
#Bob Smith,bsmith,00001234567 01/01/1986 00:00:00
#Mary Ann Doe,mdoe,00001234568 01/01/1986 00:00:01,00001234563 01/01/1
+986 00:00:02,00001234563 01/01/1986 00:00:03
#Gilligan Q Smith,gsmith,00001234569 01/01/1986 00:00:01,00001234569 0
+1/01/1986 00:00:02
[download]

I didn't go over your code in detail, but I did notice a common regex error:

[\w\d]
[download]

Many people (including yours truly at one time), mistakenly assume that \w does not match 0-9. Surprise! It does. This caused me a problem when I was trying to do the following:

my $text = "product1234imageSmall.jpg";
($type, $id, $property) = ($1, $2, $3) if $text =~ /^(\w+)(\d+)(\w+)/;
[download]

It failed pretty quickly because $type was getting set to product123 (it didn't pick up the "4" because \d had to match something).

In this case, because you are including both \w and \d in a character class, there's only an issue of redundancy and doesn't affect the functioning of the regex. I just wanted to point this out because it's easy to miss that and get bitten in other situations.

Cheers,
Ovid

Join the Perlmonks Setiathome Group or just go the the link and check out our stats.

Thanks Ovid! I appreciate the friendly amendment. How does the rest of the code look? I'd also like to hear from the original anonymous poster. Did he get his problem solved? --Mark

Woops. Forgot to log in before I sent that last post. Still hoping it helps. --Mark