It's hard to help you because your template system doesn't seem to be well defined. Every time I look at it, I see another ambiguity. Most importantly, you seem to desire looping, yet there's nothing in the template telling the template system to loop. For example, I presume
    %%Column_Name_Comma%%    Varchar(%%Column_Size%%)
should be repeated, seperated by commas, but your templating system has no means of knowing the line should be looped, and has no means of knowing a comma should be added between the lines should it be able to loop.

It seems to me you should go back to the design stage. We can't really help until you know what you want. Given that, maybe you should be using an existing templating system instead of writing your own.

By the way, it's usually easier to parse the template into a tree and work with the tree rather than the flat template. It makes looping trivial.

Thanks for the reply. I need to avoid the "s///g" option because there may be multiple lines that I need to find and replace. Here is one of the input files:



/* -------------------------------------------------------------------
+------------------------------------------------
** %%TableName%%.Fl
** -------------------------------------------------------------------
+------------------------------------------------
** FastLoad Script for %%TableName%%
** -------------------------------------------------------------------
+------------------------------------------------
** Generated by LoadGen
** -------------------------------------------------------------------
+------------------------------------------------
** What | Who | When       | Why
** -------------------------------------------------------------------
+------------------------------------------------
** 1.00 | %%Author_Initials%% | %%Date%% | Original Version
** -------------------------------------------------------------------
+------------------------------------------------
**      |     |            |
** -------------------------------------------------------------------
+------------------------------------------------
**      |     |            |
** -------------------------------------------------------------------
+------------------------------------------------
*/
.Show Versions;
.Sessions %%Sessions%%;
.LogOn %%TPID%%/%%User%%,%%Password%%;

Database %%StagingDB%%;
Drop Table ET_%%TableName%%;
Drop Table UV_%%TableName%%;
Drop Table %%TableName%%_Stage;

Create Set Table
      %%TableName%%_Stage
   , No FallBack
   , No Before Journal
   , No After Journal
   , CheckSum = High
(
    %%Column_Name_Comma%%    Varchar(%%Column_Size%%)
)
Primary Index
(
      %%Primary_Index_Column_Comma%%
)
;

.Set Record %%Record_Type%%;

Begin Loading
    %%TableName%%_Stage
Errorfiles
    ET_%%TableName%%,
   UV_%%TableName%%;
    
Help Table %%TableName%%_Stage;

Define
File = %%Data_Dir%%%%Data_FileName%%;
Show;
ErrLimit %%ErrLimit%%;

Insert Into
    %%TableName%%_Stage
Values
(
    :%%Column_Name_Comma%%
);

End Loading;

.LogOff;
[download]



Doug

So what kinds of things go into $FindWhat and how is that different than @Column's hashes? Why don't you try out Text::Template? It already does this stuff and without having to invent your own parser.

If all else fails, you could track what $-[0] and $+[0] are when you copy $1 and later use substr() to write back to $Template at those offsets with your replacement.

I don't buy your argument about not using s/// on the grounds that it appears you're rejecting it on some faulty assumptions. Regardless, here's a s///ge alike without actually using s///.

# Ala
my $region_start = $-[0];
my $region_length = $+[0] - $-[0];
my $OriginalLine = $1;
...

substr $Template, $region_start, $region_length, $ReplacementString;
[download]

use strict;

my %Column = ('TableName' => 'MyTable', 'Date' => '12-3-1979');
my $Template = join('', <DATA>);
$Template =~ s/%%(.*?)%%/$Column{$1}/g;

print $Template;

__DATA__
** FastLoad Script for %%TableName%%
** -------------------------------------------------------------------
+------------------------------------------------
** Generated by LoadGen
** -------------------------------------------------------------------
+------------------------------------------------
** What | Who | When       | Why
** -------------------------------------------------------------------
+------------------------------------------------
** 1.00 | %%Author_Initials%% | %%Date%% | Original Version
** -------------------------------------------------------------------
[download]

Thanks, that helped enormously! Doug