[hiteshiyer]

Hello,

I'm a novice perl user, making the best out of existing scripts written by gurus and need some help.

I'm trying to parse the follwoing data so that data after ";" is put into a different column within excel.

US;0;Search;,"741,305"
US;0;Item_Active_None;WDVW,"80,539"
US;0;All matching items for sale.;,"49,117"

I'm using the following parsing codes, but none of these are picking up the above lines of data.

s/^"(.{2,4});([0-9]{1,3});(.*?);(.*?),"$/$1|$2|$3|$4/g;
s/^"(.{2,4});;(.*?);(.*?),"$/$1||$2|$3/g;

s/^"(.{2,4});([0-9]{1,3});(.*?);(.*?)"$/$1|$2|$3|$4/g;
s/^"(.{2,4});;(.*?);(.*?)"$/$1||$2|$3/g;

s/^"(.{2,4});([0-9]{1,3});(.*?),"$/$1|$2|$3|/g;
s/^"(.{2,4});;(.*?),"$/$1||$2|/g;

s/^"(.{2,4});([0-9]{1,3});(.*?)"$/$1|$2|$3|/g;
s/^"(.{2,4});;(.*?)"$/$1||$2|/g;

s/^(.{2,4});([0-9]{1,3});"(.*?);(.*?),"$/$1|$2|$3|$4/g;
s/^(.{2,4});;"(.*?);(.*?),"$/$1||$2|$3/g;

s/^(.{2,4});([0-9]{1,3});"(.*?);(.*?)"$/$1|$2|$3|$4/g;
s/^(.{2,4});;"(.*?);(.*?)"$/$1||$2|$3/g;

s/^(.{2,4});([0-9]{1,3});"(.*?),"$/$1|$2|$3|/g;
s/^(.{2,4});;"(.*?),"$/$1||$2|/g;

s/^(.{2,4});([0-9]{1,3});"(.*?)"$/$1|$2|$3|/g;
s/^(.{2,4});;"(.*?)"$/$1||$2|/g;

s/^(.{2,4});([0-9]{1,3});(.*?);(.*?)$/$1|$2|$3|$4/g;
s/^(.{2,4});;(.*?);(.*?)$/$1||$2|$3/g;

s/^(.{2,4});([0-9]{1,3});(.*?)$/$1|$2|$3|/g;
s/^(.{2,4});;(.*?)$/$1||$2|/g;

Any help with the above would be greatly appreciated.

[curbview.com]

Have you tried using the "split" function. Without seeing your code, it is rather hard to assist you. (All you have given us is regexes that don't work. Are you slurping the data from a file or reading it in line by line?)

Have you tried asking the *gurus* that you got this code from?
================================================== ==============

A very useful function in Perl is split, which splits up a string and places it into an array. The function uses a regular expression and as usual works on the $_ variable unless otherwise specified.

The split function is used like this:

$info = "Caine:Michael:Actor:14, Leafy Drive";
@personal = split(/:/, $info);

which has the same overall effect as

@personal = ("Caine", "Michael", "Actor", "14, Leafy Drive");

If we have the information stored in the $_ variable then we can just use this instead

@personal = split(/:/);

If the fields are divided by any number of colons then we can use the RE codes to get round this. The code

$_ = "Capes:Geoff::Shot putter:::Big Avenue";
@personal = split(/:+/);

is the same as

@personal = ("Capes", "Geoff",
"Shot putter", "Big Avenue");

But this:

$_ = "Capes:Geoff::Shot putter:::Big Avenue";
@personal = split(/:/);

would be like

@personal = ("Capes", "Geoff", "",
"Shot putter", "", "", "Big Avenue");

A word can be split into characters, a sentence split into words and a paragraph split into sentences:

@chars = split(//, $word);
@words = split(/ /, $sentence);
@sentences = split(/\./, $paragraph);

In the first case the null string is matched between each character, and that is why the @chars array is an array of characters - ie an array of strings of length 1.

[hiteshiyer]

Thank you! Unfortunately I can not ask the person who created the script as he is no longer around.
I am getting the data from a file and using the variable $_ to place it into an array.

I guess what's confusing me is that why aren't these fields
( US;0;Search;,"741,305"
US;0;Item_Active_None;WDVW,"80,539"
US;0;All matching items for sale.;,"49,117" )
being recognized by any of the wildcards used in the switch commands.

The above switch commands do recognize the following field
( US;;ViewItem_Active_Outbid;STRK:MEBIDX:IT ) and separates them at semicolons

Thank you again for all your help.

Regards,