Clean Up downloaded "messy" script?

matze77 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

If i got something like this (code tags forgotten), taken from: "animal":

                                   10: use Data::Dumper;
                               11:
                                 12: my $info = "dog";
                                   13:
                                     14: {
                                       15:   try($info);
[download]

Pseudo Code:

foreach {
("^    ")  && | [[0-99]:];
print "";
}
[download]

Explanation/Condition: If the first 3 characters of the line are whitespaces and/or a number followed by":" do replace whitespace and numbers by "" empty string?

Now the question is: How do i have to use awk and sed e.g. or what would you suggest is effective to accomplish this?.

Sure i could delete it all manually but since this is a common stupid problem and i need to practice my poor "skills" ...

"Disclaimer: The word "messy" is only meant in context of the formatting if copied not regarding the content"

Update: solved, done in bash/shell again:

sed s/^[ \t]*// #remove leading whitespaces
sed s/^[0-9]*//g #remove leading numbers
sed s/^:*//g  #remove leading ":"
[download]

Thx Corion
/update:

Thanks in Advance
MH

Comment on Clean Up downloaded "messy" script? Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Clean Up downloaded "messy" script? by Corion (Patriarch) on Dec 20, 2008 at 13:45 UTC
How about using the `s///` operator (which you could know from `sed`)? `s/^\s\d+://;` [download] or, in a oneliner: `perl -lpe "s/^\s\d+://;"` [download] or run the following to get a full Perl script that does the cleanup: `perl -MO=Deparse -lpe "s/^\s*\d+://;"` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Clean Up downloaded "messy" script? by oko1 (Deacon) on Dec 20, 2008 at 14:22 UTC
Your specification of 'first 3 characters are whitespaces and/or a number followed by ":"' is a bit conflicting - does that include 3 whitespaces followed by a number? should 3 whitespaces be followed by a colon? - but here's the best match I can come up with for that description (I'm guessing the answer to both of the above is "no"): `#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; # Build a regex of "\d\d\d:\|\s\d\d:\|\s\s\d:\|\s\s\s" my $str = join ":\|", map { '\s'x$_ . '\d'x(3-$_) } 0 .. 3; while (<>){ s/^$str//; # Remove anything that matches regex from start of line print; }` [download] -- "Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about." -- B. L. Whorf	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Clean Up downloaded "messy" script? by matze77 (Friar) on Dec 20, 2008 at 14:52 UTC
Thought of doing it in 3 cycles (all at the beginning of the line ofc): 1st: Remove all whitespaces. 2nd: remove all numbers. 3rd: remove ":" This should not conflict with regular code like #! or leading whitespaces after the ":" ... Thank you oko1, i learned another method i didnt know ... MH	[reply]