inserting new lines

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

Hi all, was wondering how i could manipulate the following text:

xxx ; xxx { xxx }
xxx ( xxx ; xxx
[download]

so that the output is something like:

xxx ; xxx { 
xxx }
xxx ( xxx ; 
xxx
[download]

xxx ; xxx { xxx 
}
xxx ( 
xxx ; xxx
[download]

xxx 
; xxx { xxx }
xxx ( xxx 
; xxx
[download]

it's randomized.. (i did it in vbs but cant in perl) :( thanks for any help

Comment on inserting new lines Select or Download Code

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Re: inserting new lines by JavaFan (Canon) on Apr 20, 2012 at 19:23 UTC
You want to randomly change spaces into newlines? Something like: `s/ /rand() < .5 ? ' ' : "\n"/eg;` [download] should do.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: inserting new lines by Anonymous Monk on Apr 20, 2012 at 19:29 UTC
nah trying to insert newlines after those 3 special characers, but decide what character to insert a newline after randomly, will it be after ';' or } or { ? would it be ; and { or just ; ?	[reply]
Re^3: inserting new lines by kennethk (Abbot) on Apr 20, 2012 at 20:26 UTC
To randomly select one of the three characters, you can use code like `my $char = qw(; { })[rand 3];`. You can then interpolate the result into a substitution that uses a look behind. #11929 First ask yourself `How would I do this without a computer?' Then have the computer do it the same way.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: inserting new lines by Anonymous Monk on Apr 20, 2012 at 20:41 UTC
Re^4: inserting new line by Anonymous Monk on Apr 20, 2012 at 20:46 UTC
Re: inserting new lines by kennethk (Abbot) on Apr 20, 2012 at 19:22 UTC
What did you try? Is there a rule for where to insert new lines? It's a fairly trivial operation using regular expressions. For example, inserting new lines before semicolons could be done with `#!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; my $text = <<EOT; xxx ; xxx { xxx } xxx ( xxx ; xxx' EOT $text =~ s/(?=;)/\n/g; print $text;` [download] #11929 First ask yourself `How would I do this without a computer?' Then have the computer do it the same way.	[reply] [d/l]