jeiku has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi,

I am generating CSV event log files and some of the lines are not on one line, for example:

I want to read everyline that matches KB[0-9] and store that data on the end of the previous line and keep doing that until it reaches a line that does not match KB[0-9].

My code as usual is failing miserably. (in the example below I tried to read the KB lines into a temporary variable. 

while (<__DATA__>)  {

# I don't know how to calculate the length $# of __DATA__
# so I just put 10 in there instead.
    for($i = 0; $i < 10; $i++)  {
        if($data[$i] =~ m/KB[0-9]/) {
                do {
                        push(@temp, $data[$i]);
                        $i++;
                }while ($data[$i] =~ m/KB[0-9]/);
        }
    }
    # For some reason the loop is loading the whole file
    # into @temp
    print "@temp\n";
}

__DATA__
"Information","17","4/13/2006 12:54:25 PM","Windows Update Agent","ISA
+","Installation","N/A","Installation Ready: The following updates are
+ downloaded and ready for installation. To install the updates, an ad
+ministrator should log on to this computer and Windows will prompt wi
+th further instructions:
- Security Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB911562)
- Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - April 2006 (KB890830)
- Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer for Windows Server 
+2003 (KB912812)
- Security Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB908531)
- Cumulative Security Update for Outlook Express for Windows Server 20
+03 (KB911567)"
"Information","17","4/13/2006 12:54:19 PM","Windows Update Agent","ISA
+","Installation","N/A","Installation Ready: The following updates are
+ downloaded and ready for installation. To install the updates, an ad
+ministrator should log on to this computer and Windows will prompt wi
+th further instructions:
- Security Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB911562)
- Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - April 2006 (KB890830)
- Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer for Windows Server 
+2003 (KB912812)
- Security Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB908531)"

[download]
Please help :(

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Problem with matching multiple lines
by perlsen (Chaplain) on Apr 19, 2006 at 08:34 UTC
    Hai, I think this could help you, 
    while (<DATA>){
        
if($_ =~ m/KB([0-9]+)/) 
{              
push(@temp, $_);                
} 
}

print "@temp\n";

__DATA__
"Information","17","4/13/2006 12:54:25 PM","Windows Update Agent","ISA
+","Installation","N/A","Installation Ready: The following updates are
+ downloaded and ready for installation. To install the updates, an ad
+ministrator should log on to this computer and Windows will prompt wi
+th further instructions:
- Security Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB911562)
- Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - April 2006 (KB890830)
- Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer for Windows Server 
+2003 (KB912812)
- Security Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB908531)
- Cumulative Security Update for Outlook Express for Windows Server 20
+03 (KB911567)"
"Information","17","4/13/2006 12:54:19 PM","Windows Update Agent","ISA
+","Installation","N/A","Installation Ready: The following updates are
+ downloaded and ready for installation. To install the updates, an ad
+ministrator should log on to this computer and Windows will prompt wi
+th further instructions:
- Security Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB911562)
- Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - April 2006 (KB890830)
- Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer for Windows Server 
+2003 (KB912812)
- Security Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB908531)"

    [download]

    Regards
    perlsen
[reply]
[d/l]
      Hi, I found this:

      http://rath.ca/Misc/Perl_CSV/index.shtml
      http://rath.ca/Misc/Perl_CSV/multiline-csv.tgz

      Which does exactly what I need... Thanks anyway :)
[reply]
Re: Problem with matching multiple lines
by johngg (Canon) on Apr 19, 2006 at 08:52 UTC
    This script concatenates multi-line messages, printing them as it goes.

    use strict;
use warnings;

my $buffer = q();

while(<DATA>)
{
    chomp;
    if(/KB[0-9]/)
    {
        $buffer .= $_;
    }
    else
    {
        print "$buffer\n" if $buffer;
        $buffer = $_;
    }
}
print "$buffer\n";

__DATA__
"Information","17","4/13/2006 12:54:25 PM","Windows Update Agent","ISA
+","Installation","N/A","Installation Ready: The following updates are
+ downloaded and ready for installation. To install the updates, an ad
+ministrator should log on to this computer and Windows will prompt wi
+th further instructions:
- Security Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB911562)
- Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - April 2006 (KB890830)
- Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer for Windows Server 
+2003 (KB912812)
- Security Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB908531)
- Cumulative Security Update for Outlook Express for Windows Server 20
+03 (KB911567)"
"Information","17","4/13/2006 12:54:19 PM","Windows Update Agent","ISA
+","Installation","N/A","Installation Ready: The following updates are
+ downloaded and ready for installation. To install the updates, an ad
+ministrator should log on to this computer and Windows will prompt wi
+th further instructions:
- Security Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB911562)
- Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - April 2006 (KB890830)
- Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer for Windows Server 
+2003 (KB912812)
- Security Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB908531)"

    [download]

    I hope it is of use.

    Cheers,

    JohnGG

    Update:

    I looked at this again and wondered how it was printing the last log message when I had forgotten to do a final print statement after the while loop. It was working because there was a blank line at the end of the __DATA__ file (I nearly said Data Division thus revealing a murky COBOL past).

    Code now corrected.

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
Re: Problem with matching multiple lines
by izut (Chaplain) on Apr 19, 2006 at 09:33 UTC

    You can search for the string "(KB\d+)" at the end of line.

    while (<DATA>) {
  if (m/\((KB\d+)\)\s*$/) {
    print "$1\n";
  }
}

    [download]
    Update: Sorry, I made a mistake here (0600 here, what do you think :)). You can use this approach: 
    # Change default separator to \n"
$/ = "\n\"";
while (<DATA>) {
  # Put " in the beginning of line.
  $_ = qq/"$_/ unless m/^"/;
  # Removes \n
  s/\n/ /g;
}

    [download]

    Igor 'izut' Sutton
    your code, your rules.

[reply]
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[select]

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