Scanning a file for a match, printing different part of the line when found.

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

Hello, I found this code to scan a file and print each occurrence of a string. As it is, the exact search string is printed. How can I print a different part of the line when the string is found? Example: Search for "Name:", and every time it is found, print just the name itself (which falls one space after the colon) and not the search string "Name:".

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use IO::File;

use constant FILE => 'search.txt';
use constant FIND => 'string to find';

IO::File->input_record_separator(FIND);

my $fh = IO::File->new(FILE, O_RDONLY)
  or die 'Could not open file ', FILE, ": $!";

$fh->getline;  #fast forward to the first match

#print each occurence in the file
print IO::File->input_record_separator
  while $fh->getline;

$fh->close;
[download]

Comment on Scanning a file for a match, printing different part of the line when found. Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Scanning a file for a match, printing different part of the line when found. by wind (Priest) on Mar 26, 2011 at 19:20 UTC
Maybe it's time to start learning instead of just "finding code"? `use strict; use warnings; my $file = 'search.txt'; open my $fh, $file or die $!; while (<$fh>) { print "$1\n" if /Name:\s(.)/; }` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Scanning a file for a match, printing different part of the line when found. by cheech (Beadle) on Mar 26, 2011 at 19:42 UTC
Thanks wind	[reply]
Re: Scanning a file for a match, printing different part of the line when found. by jwkrahn (Abbot) on Mar 26, 2011 at 19:27 UTC
I found this code to scan a file and print each occurrence of a string. That only works correctly if the "search string" is not at the end of the file, otherwise it prints one less than the correct number. And even though you are using the "getline" method you are not actually reading "lines" because you are re-defining the Input Record Separator from its normal value of "\n" to something else so you are actually reading "records".	[reply]
Re: Scanning a file for a match, printing different part of the line when found. by ww (Archbishop) on Mar 26, 2011 at 20:10 UTC
perlre perlretut and the numerous offerings at Pattern-Matching-Regular-Expressions-and-Parsing in our fine selection of Tutorials.	[reply]
Re: Scanning a file for a match, printing different part of the line when found. by philipbailey (Curate) on Mar 26, 2011 at 19:42 UTC
You can do this sort of thing with a one-liner. You don't specify what you want to match in much detail, but here is an example: `perl -ne 'print "$1\n" if /Name:\s*(.+?)\b/' search.txt`	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Scanning a file for a match, printing different part of the line when found. by ww (Archbishop) on Mar 26, 2011 at 20:21 UTC
Since OP wasn't specific about how "Name" is constructed, ++ But note that this will not satisfy the op by printing the (whole) name field, if "Name" is comprised of more than one word (for example: `Firstname MI Lastname`), because of the `\b`	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Scanning a file for a match, printing different part of the line when found. by ELISHEVA (Prior) on Mar 26, 2011 at 18:55 UTC
How can I print a different part of the line when the string is found? What have you tried?	[reply]