Replace Character Symbols with White Space

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

I need to clean up my data, but I do not know how to. I want to remove all the + signs, I realise that is probably simple, but I couldnt figure out how to replace a sybmbol with whitespace!

This is an example of the data I need to clean :

<Alan+Braxe+at+The+Hoxton+on+6+July+2012> <0000 2012-07-06T22:00:00Z 2012-07-06T23:59:59Z> <The+Hoxton> <Pop+Kult!+%23009> <0000 2012-07-06T22:00:00Z 2012-07-06T23:59:59Z> <Gladstone+Hotel> <Dimitri+Vegas+-+Like+Mike+at+Maison+Mercer+on+6+July+2012> <0000 2012-07-06T22:00:00Z 2012-07-06T23:59:59Z> <Maison+Mercer> <Aesthetic+Perfection+at+Neu-ral+on+7+July+2012> <0000 2012-07-07T00:00:00Z 2012-07-07T23:59:59Z> <Neu%252Bral> <K.Flay+at+Wrongbar+on+7+July+2012> <0000 2012-07-07T19:00:00Z 2012-07-07T23:59:59Z>

Comment on Replace Character Symbols with White Space

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Re: Replace Character Symbols with White Space by davido (Cardinal) on Jun 25, 2012 at 16:09 UTC
The tr/// operator (perlop). `$string =~ tr/+/ /;` [download] Example: `perl -e '$string = "+=+=+=+"; $string =~ tr/+/ /; print "($string)\n"; +'` [download] ...the output... `( = = = )` [download] If it's possible that your data has legitimate '+' characters (perhaps escaped, or quoted), then you'll have to use a more elaborate solution. I think that perlintro is required reading for anyone new to Perl, and while the `tr///` operator isn't discussed therein, the `s///` is. The `s///` operator could be used (less efficiently than `tr///`) like this: `s/[+]/ /g`. So after reading through perlintro, while you might not have discovered the most efficient way of doing it, you would have gotten a good start toward coming up with a reasonable way of doing it. Dave	[reply] [d/l] [select]

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Re: Replace Character Symbols with White Space
by davido (Cardinal) on Jun 25, 2012 at 16:09 UTC

The tr/// operator (perlop).

$string =~ tr/+/ /;
[download]

Example:

perl -e '$string = "+=+=+=+"; $string =~ tr/+/ /; print "($string)\n";
+'
[download]

...the output...

( = = = )
[download]

If it's possible that your data has legitimate '+' characters (perhaps escaped, or quoted), then you'll have to use a more elaborate solution.

I think that perlintro is required reading for anyone new to Perl, and while the tr/// operator isn't discussed therein, the s/// is. The s/// operator could be used (less efficiently than tr///) like this: s/[+]/ /g. So after reading through perlintro, while you might not have discovered the most efficient way of doing it, you would have gotten a good start toward coming up with a reasonable way of doing it.

Dave

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