Extract lines from text file

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

Hello all,

I have been looking at this for a few days and cannot see an answer so I humbly ask your opinion.

I have a data file that is laid out like the following:

DOE JOHN
123
DENIRO ROBERT
123
123
123
CUBE ICE
123
123
[download]

There are names followed by lines that have numbers in them that correspond to each name. The name line can be followed by any number of number lines. I want to extract the name and its corersponding number lines if the name matches and/or the number lines match some user input.

The following code is where I am starting:

use strict;
use warnings;


open OUTPUT, "> info.txt" or die $!;
print "What file do you want parsed? ";

my $file1 = <STDIN>;

print "Name: ";

chomp (my $name = <STDIN>);

open FILE, "$file1";

while (<FILE>) {
    
    if (/$name/.../\n/) {
        
        print OUTPUT $_ until ($_ ne\d+/); 
            
            }
            
        }
[download]

I would be most grateful for any guidance. Thanks!

Comment on Extract lines from text file Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Extract lines from text file by toolic (Bishop) on Jan 31, 2011 at 19:51 UTC
Use a state variable. `use warnings; use strict; my $input_name = 'DENIRO ROBERT'; my $print_flag = 0; while (<DATA>) { chomp; if (/^[a-z]/i) { $print_flag = ($_ eq $input_name) } print "$_\n" if $print_flag; } __DATA__ DOE JOHN 123 DENIRO ROBERT 123 123 123 CUBE ICE 123 123` [download] prints: `DENIRO ROBERT 123 123 123` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Extract lines from text file by jethro (Monsignor) on Jan 31, 2011 at 22:48 UTC
if you also want to search for a number, just change toolics code to collect name and numbers in an array. Reset that array whenever you see the next name. Also have a variable $found that you set to 1 if you find the name or number and set to 0 whenever you see the next name. But first when you find the next name and $found is 1, print out the data you collected in the array.	[reply]