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

I'm trying to parse the bodies of some automated emails. One would think it would be easy, but for some reason the generator of the emails does NOT cut lines using a \n, but by adding spaces. The number of spaces added seems to vary.

Initially I broke the email into an array by splitting on \s{15,}, but this isn't ideal, and drops some of the values. I'm considering splitting on the colons, but I'm not convinced this is a great idea and seems to lead to more headaches. Any ideas for a somewhat robust, straightforward way to parse this? 

 Security          : BULGY N V-                                       
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+          
 Item Overridden   : Earnings Per Share                               
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+           
 Initial Value     :  (USD)                                           
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+           
 Current Value     :  ()                                              
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+           
 Overridden Value  : 160 (USD)                                        
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+           
 Effective         : 08/20/1999 through 08/20/2000                    
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+                                                                     
+           
 Override Type     : Data
 SecurityID        : 1076665
 Sedol             : 2451234
 Cusip             : N66696606
 ISIN              : NL0006122988

[download]
Update: Ah, I've found a potential way. while ($bdy=~/(.*?):\s(.*?)\s\s/g) seems to work alright. Comments on this approach?



-----------------
s''limp';@p=split '!','n!h!p!';s,m,s,;$s=y;$c=slice @p1;so brutally;d;$n=reverse;$c=$s**$#p;print(''.$c^chop($n))while($c/=$#p)>=1;

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Parsing semi-erratic text
by ikegami (Patriarch) on Aug 23, 2006 at 19:39 UTC

    The data you submitted *does* have newlines. 

    while (<DATA>) {
   my ($key, $val) = /^\s*([^:]*?)\s*:\s*(.*?)\s*$/
      or next;

   print("[$key:$val]\n");
}

    [download]

    and 

    while (<DATA>) {
   my ($key, $val) = split(/:/, $_, 2);
   next if not defined $val;
   s/^\s+//, s/\s+$// for $key, $val;

   print("[$key:$val]\n");
}

    [download]

    both do the trick.

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
      Hrmm...perhaps an effect of my cutting and pasting? The body of my email gets read into a variable (so it's like slurping a file). I can't seem to split on newlines, and if I use a regex to count I get only one in each email (which I presume is at the end).

      Thank you for the implicit character class ([^:]) suggestion, by the way. I hate putting .* into regexes, even with the non-greedy modifier.



      -----------------
      s''limp';@p=split '!','n!h!p!';s,m,s,;$s=y;$c=slice @p1;so brutally;d;$n=reverse;$c=$s**$#p;print(''.$c^chop($n))while($c/=$#p)>=1;
[reply]
[d/l]
        I agree. .* and .*? usually/often assume the data is formatted correctly.
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
Re: Parsing semi-erratic text
by GrandFather (Saint) on Aug 23, 2006 at 21:07 UTC

    Not quite. Consider (note I've trimmed the number of trailing spaces and retained the line ends (but strip them):

    use strict;
use warnings;
use Date::EzDate;

my $str = <<DATA;
 Security          : BULGY N V-                         
 Item Overridden   : Earnings Per Share                 
 Initial Value     :  (USD)                             
 Current Value     :  ()                                
 Overridden Value  : 160 (USD)                          
 Effective         : 08/20/1999 through 08/20/2000      
 Override Type     : Data
 SecurityID        : 1076665
 Sedol             : 2451234
 Cusip             : N66696606
 ISIN              : NL0006122988  


DATA

$str =~ s/\n//g;

while ($str =~ /(.*?):\s(.*?)\s\s/g) {
    my ($key, $value) = ($1, $2);
    
    $key =~ s/^\s*//;
    $key =~ s/\s*$//;
    $value =~ s/^\s*//;
    $value =~ s/\s*$//;
    print ">$key: $value<\n";
}

    [download]

    Prints:

    >Security: BULGY N V-<
>Item Overridden: Earnings Per Share<
>Initial Value: (USD)<
>Current Value: ()<
>Overridden Value: 160 (USD)<
>Effective: 08/20/1999 through 08/20/2000<
>Override Type: Data SecurityID<
>: 1076665 Sedol<
>: 2451234 Cusip<
>: N66696606 ISIN<
>: NL0006122988<

    [download]

    The regex /(\w[\w ]{17}):\s+((?:(?!\w[\w ]{17}:).)*)/g latches on to a 18 character wide label preceeding a : and then grabs characters upto the next label field. The result is:

    >Security: BULGY N V-<
>Item Overridden: Earnings Per Share<
>Initial Value: (USD)<
>Current Value: ()<
>Overridden Value: 160 (USD)<
>Effective: 08/20/1999 through 08/20/2000<
>Override Type: Data<
>SecurityID: 1076665<
>Sedol: 2451234<
>Cusip: N66696606<
>ISIN: NL0006122988<

    [download]
    DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

Back to Seekers of Perl Wisdom