[NTLUG:Discuss] perl question

[Bobby Wrenn]

On Wed, 2003-06-04 at 11:00, MadHat wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-06-04 at 10:43, Bobby Wrenn wrote:
> > On Wed, 2003-06-04 at 09:52, Michael Patrick wrote:
> > > On Wed, Jun 04, 2003 at 09:49:02AM -0500, Bobby Wrenn wrote:
> > > > I have a text file in the following format:
> > > > 
> > > > name1
> > > > [name2]
> > > > address1
> > > > [address2]
> > > > city, state [zip]
> > > >
> > > 
> > > How is the next record done?  Is there a space between them so you could read each line then we you hit a blank line you'll know city, state [zip] was the preceding line?
> > > 
> > > Michael 
> > > 
> > Each line is terminated with a <cr>. There are no blank lines between
> > records,
> 
> Unless you can guarantee that the name field will never have a comma (,)
> and you can guarantee that the city/state field will, you are in a
> pickle.
> 
> Like is someone is 'Richard Cranium, Jr', then you couldn't use the
> existence of the comma to determine the end of each record.  Or even
> matching on a word followed by a comma then 2 characters.
> 
The file will come from a M$ Excel spreadsheet. I can jerk the text out
and make sure there are no commas. Then I think I can look for a space 2
alpha characters and a new line and stick a comma back in after the
city. Then the only problem is to get rid of everything but the line
with city state and zip.