Re^2: parsing files and modifying format

graf you are correct sample2 is what I needed, except each file has multiple records, example I provided was merely one of them,it looks like the +? isn't working quite the way I though it would in this one line though..not sure why I expected the names, would not get printed but instead they do appear in my csv, I was thinking I would do an ole call to excel and just dump the values right on in there without the names but it doesnt.. is that due to the join prints above this loop?

for my $file ( @files ) {
    ( $basename ) = ( $file =~ /(.+)\.txt$/ );
    if ( open( F, $file )) {
        ( $date, @values ) = <F>;
        chomp $date;
        chomp @values;
        s/.+?,// for ( @values );      # delete the "name," parts
        print join( ",", $basename, $date, @values ), "\n";
        close F;
    }
    else {
        warn "$file: $!\n";
    }
}
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Re^3: parsing files and modifying format by graff (Chancellor) on Jul 18, 2008 at 23:41 UTC
I'm trying to work out where your sentence boundaries are -- if you add periods and sentence-initial capitalization in the paragraph text, that would help... each file has multiple records, example I provided was merely one of them If you have trouble figuring out how to parse the input files, start a new thread on that. As I mentioned in my first reply, it should be easy to work out how the file contents are arranged, and to treat them accordingly. it looks like the +? isn't working quite the way I though it would in this one line though.. I have no clue what you're talking about there -- maybe if you show a specific input data set and the resulting output, and explain what's wrong with that output, it will be clear what's wrong. I was thinking I would do an ole call to excel and just dump the values right on in there without the names but it doesnt.. I know nothing about ole, and I see no reason to go there, since I do know that a simple comma-delimited file, with a single line at the top for column headings, works fine for importing to excel. Of course, if the "values" contain commas (and quotes), then it is not simple, because fields containing commas as data need to be quoted, and quotes occurring as data in any field need to be escaped. As a rule, it's fairly common for commas and quotes to appear in text data, but it's probably a lot less likely that your data files contain tabs, so you might consider writing tab-delimited output instead of comma delimited -- that works equally well for importing to excel.	[reply]

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Re^3: parsing files and modifying format
by graff (Chancellor) on Jul 18, 2008 at 23:41 UTC

each file has multiple records, example I provided was merely one of them

If you have trouble figuring out how to parse the input files, start a new thread on that. As I mentioned in my first reply, it should be easy to work out how the file contents are arranged, and to treat them accordingly.

it looks like the +? isn't working quite the way I though it would in this one line though..

I have no clue what you're talking about there -- maybe if you show a specific input data set and the resulting output, and explain what's wrong with that output, it will be clear what's wrong.

I was thinking I would do an ole call to excel and just dump the values right on in there without the names but it doesnt..

I know nothing about ole, and I see no reason to go there, since I do know that a simple comma-delimited file, with a single line at the top for column headings, works fine for importing to excel.

Of course, if the "values" contain commas (and quotes), then it is not simple, because fields containing commas as data need to be quoted, and quotes occurring as data in any field need to be escaped.

As a rule, it's fairly common for commas and quotes to appear in text data, but it's probably a lot less likely that your data files contain tabs, so you might consider writing tab-delimited output instead of comma delimited -- that works equally well for importing to excel.

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