mmittiga17 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question: 

Hi All,  I am looking for suggestions or to be pointed in the right di
+rection on using config files to process lines of perl code.  I am fa
+miliar with using config modules but I am looking to take it a step d
+eeper.   What I would like to do is have a perl script look to a conf
+ig file in order to decide how to process a record in a text file.

Example:
I need to map a code from a record to another code.
if Trancode0 eq ABC than make Trancode XYZ.  Below is how I do it in t
+he script but want to avoid having to keep changing the script every 
+time I need to create a new translation mapping.

[download]
if (($TRANCODE0 =~m/(TSP|KSP)/) && ($QUANTITY ne '00000000.00000') && 
+($QSIGN eq "+") && ($KEYCODE =~m/(10|11|20|60)/)){
    $TRAN_CODE = "RCV";
}

if (($TRANCODE0 =~m/(TSP|KSP)/) && ($QSIGN eq "-") && ($KEYCODE =~m/(1
+0|11|20|60)/)){
    $TRAN_CODE = "DLV";
}

if (($TRANCODE0 =~m/(TSP|KSP)/) && ($QUANTITY eq '00000000.00000')  &&
+ ($KEYCODE =~m/(10|11|20|60)/)){
    $TRAN_CODE = "DLV";
}

if (($TRANCODE0 eq "EXP") && ($SECTYPE eq "8")){
   $TRAN_CODE = "OPTEXP";
}

if (($TRANCODE0 eq "EXP") && ($SECTYPE ne '8')){
   $TRAN_CODE = "DLV";
}

[download]
Any thoughts or suggestion are deeply appreciated.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: using a config file
by mzedeler (Pilgrim) on Jul 30, 2009 at 14:34 UTC

    I've had the same challenge and solved it with a tab separated rule file. It could look something like this:

    TRANCODE     QUANTITY                   QSIGN    KEYCODE    HANDLER
/(TSP|KSP)/  /^.*(?<!0000000.00000)$/   +        /(10|11|20|60)/    se
+t(TRAN_CODE, "RCV")
/(TSP|KSP)/  *                          -        /(10|11|20|60)/    se
+t(TRAN_CODE, "DLV")
...

    [download]

    The table is meant as a lookup table where each value (apart from the values in the rightmost field) are lookup keys that are processed left to right like this:

    • /<some regex>/ matches against <some regex>
    • * matches against anything
    • All other values are considered literals and must match exactly (see the plus and minus signs above)

    The different field types have different precedence, so a * will have lower precedence than a regex, which in turn has lower precedence than a literal value.

    The rightmost field is just a value that says what to do when matched. It can be a reference to some handler or just a value to insert somewhere.

    I do have a module to do this kind of lookup, but it is currently not open source. If you really want it, I can ask the owners if they will let me release it.

[reply]
[d/l]
      Thanks this is a big help. Been racking my brain on this for a while. I would love to try the module if possible. Cheers!
[reply]

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