Parsing a Text File using regex

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Hello,
I have been scratching my head on this problem and was wondering if someone
can help me out. Basically I need to take a raw list of data (a snippet of
it is below my email) and create another file with the information formatted
in the following format: "Date: Category: Winner." The example of the
finished file is as follows:

1934: Actor: Clark Gable
1934: Actress: Claudette Colbert
1934: Art Direction: The Merry Widow

As I am not a programmer by nature, I'm trying to figure out how to work out
the logic of this program. The "Date" does not repeat with each category
but only changes when the next year of results is displayed in the data
file. How do I setup my logic to support this? Any help that can be
provided would be much appreciated.

Just an FYI - here is my crack at finding the lines that match each
attribute:
Date: print $_ if $_ =~ /^(\d{4})*/
#look for four digits at the beginning of a string
Category: print $_ if $_ =~ /^[A-Z]+/
#look for one or more all caps characters at the beginning of a string
Winner: print $_ if $_ =~ /(\*)*(--)/
#look for a field that starts with an asterisks and contains "--"

I am open to comments on my regular expressions. Thanks!


==================== SNIPPET OF RAW DATA FILE ====================

1934 (7th),
ACTOR,
*,"Clark Gable -- It Happened One Night {""Peter Warne""}"
ACTRESS,
*,"Claudette Colbert -- It Happened One Night {""Ellie Andrews""}"
ART DIRECTION,
*,"The Merry Widow -- Cedric Gibbons, Fredric Hope"
,[NOTE: won by two votes]
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR,
*,Viva Villa! -- John Waters
CINEMATOGRAPHY,per
*,Cleopatra -- Vicxtor Milner
DIRECTING,
*,It Happened One Night -- Frank Capra
FILM EDITING,
*,Eskimo -- Conrad Nervig
MUSIC (Scoring),
*,"One Night of Love -- Columbia Studio Music Department, Louis Silvers,
head of department (Thematic Music by Victor Schertzinger and Gus Kahn)"
MUSIC (Song),
*,"""The Continental"" from The Gay Divorcee -- Music by Con Conrad; Lyrics
by Herb Magidson"
OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION,
*,It Happened One Night -- Columbia
SHORT SUBJECT (Cartoon),
*,"The Tortoise and the Hare -- Walt Disney, Producer"
SHORT SUBJECT (Comedy),
*,"La Cucaracha -- Kenneth Macgowan, Producer"
SHORT SUBJECT (Novelty),
*,"City of Wax -- Stacy Woodard and Horace Woodard, Producers"
SOUND RECORDING,
*,"One Night of Love -- Columbia Studio Sound Department, John Livadary,
Sound Director"
WRITING (Adaptation),
*,It Happened One Night -- Robert Riskin
WRITING (Original Story),
*,Manhattan Melodrama -- Arthur Caesar
SPECIAL AWARD,
*,"To Shirley Temple, in grateful recognition of her outstanding
contribution to screen entertainment during the year 1934."
SCIENTIFIC OR TECHNICAL AWARD (Class II),
*,"To ELECTRICAL RESEARCH PRODUCTS, INC. for their development of the
Vertical Cut Disc Method of recording sound for motion pictures (hill and
dale recording). [Sound]"
SCIENTIFIC OR TECHNICAL AWARD (Class III),
*,"To COLUMBIA PICTURES CORPORATION for their application of the Vertical
Cut Disc Method (hill and dale recording) to actual studio production, with
their recording of the sound on the picture One Night of Love. [Sound]"
*,To BELL AND HOWELL COMPANY for their development of the Bell and Howell
Fully Automatic Sound and Picture Printer. [Laboratory]
,
1935 (8th),
ACTOR,
*,"Victor McLaglen -- The Informer {""Gypo Nolan""}"
ACTRESS,
*,"Bette Davis -- Dangerous {""Joyce Heath""}"
ART DIRECTION,
*,The Dark Angel -- Richard Day
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR,
*,"The Lives of a Bengal Lancer -- Clem Beauchamp, Paul Wing"
CINEMATOGRAPHY,
*,A Midsummer Night's Dream -- Hal Mohr
,[NOTE: THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL NOMINATION. Write-in candidate.]
DANCE DIRECTION,
*,"Dave Gould -- ""I've Got a Feeling You're Fooling"" number from Broadway
Melody of 1936; and ""Straw Hat"" number from Folies Bergere"
DIRECTING,
*,The Informer -- John Ford
FILM EDITING,
*,A Midsummer Night's Dream -- Ralph Dawson
MUSIC (Scoring),
*,"The Informer -- RKO Radio Studio Music Department, Max Steiner, head of
department (Score by Max Steiner)"
MUSIC (Song),
*,"""Lullaby of Broadway"" from Gold Diggers of 1935 -- Music by Harry
Warren; Lyrics by Al Dubin"
OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION,
*,Mutiny on the Bounty -- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
SHORT SUBJECT (Cartoon),
*,"Three Orphan Kittens -- Walt Disney, Producer"
SHORT SUBJECT (Comedy),
*,"How to Sleep -- Jack Chertok, Producer"
SHORT SUBJECT (Novelty),
*,Wings over Mt. Everest -- Gaumont British and Skibo Productions
SOUND RECORDING,
*,"Naughty Marietta -- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio Sound Department, Douglas
Shearer, Sound Director"
WRITING (Original Story),
*,"The Scoundrel -- Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur"
WRITING (Screenplay),
*,The Informer -- Dudley Nichols
,"[NOTE: Mr. Nichols initially refused the award, but Academy records
indicate that he was in possession of a statuette by 1949.]"
SPECIAL AWARD,
*,"To David Wark Griffith, for his distinguished creative achievements as
director and producer and his invaluable initiative and lasting
contributions to the progress of the motion picture arts."
SCIENTIFIC OR TECHNICAL AWARD (Class II),
*,To AGFA ANSCO CORPORATION for their development of the Agfa infra-red
film. [Film]
*,To EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY for their development of the Eastman Pola-Screen.
[Lenses and Filters]
SCIENTIFIC OR TECHNICAL AWARD (Class III),
*,"To METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER STUDIO for the development of anti-directional
negative and positive development by means of jet turbulation, and the
application of the method to all negative and print processing of the entire
product of a major producing company. [Laboratory]"
*,"To WILLIAM A. MUELLER of Warner Bros.-First National Studio Sound
Department for his method of dubbing, in which the level of the dialogue
automatically controls the level of the accompanying music and sound
effects. [Sound]"
*,"To MOLE-RICHARDSON COMPANY for their development of the ""Solar-spot""
spot lamps. [Lighting]"
*,To DOUGLAS SHEARER and METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER STUDIO SOUND DEPARTMENT for
their automatic control system for cameras and sound recording machines and
auxiliary stage equipment. [Stage Operations]
*,"To ELECTRICAL RESEARCH PRODUCTS, INC. for their study and development of
equipment to analyze and measure flutter resulting from the travel of the
film through the mechanisms used in the recording and reproduction of sound.
[Sound]"
*,"To PARAMOUNT PRODUCTIONS, INC. for the design and construction of the
Paramount transparency air turbine developing machine. [Laboratory]"
*,"To NATHAN LEVINSON, Director of Sound Recording for Warner Bros.-First
National Studio, for the method of intercutting variable density and
variable area sound tracks to secure an increase in the effective volume
range of sound recorded for motion pictures. [Sound]"
,

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Re: Parsing a Text File using regex

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Hi Ryan,
Try the the code below, it should help.

=======================

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $ln="";
my ($yr,$cat,$win)=("","","");
my $filename="New_output.txt";
chomp(my $raw_file=<@ARGV>);

open READFILE,"<","$raw_file" or die "can't open $!";
open OUTPUTFILE,">","$filename" or die "cannot read $!";
while(){chomp;
$ln.="\n" if /^\W.?+$/;
if(/^\d{4}/){$yr=$&;} # get the year
if(/^[A-Z].+/){ $cat=$&; # get the Category
$cat=join"",split /,/,$cat; # remove the comma in front
$ln.=" $yr: ".$cat; # add both the year and Category
}
if(/\--.+/){$win=$`; # get the winner
$win=join"",split /[\*,\"]/,$win;
$ln.=": ".$win."\n"; #### If you use "$ln.=": ".$win. $&. "\n";"
#### you get "-- It Happened One Night {""Peter Warne""}",etc added to
what you have
}
}
print OUTPUTFILE $ln;
close OUTPUTFILE;
close READFILE;
============================================================
I used special match variables ($`, $&, and $'), which means
$` ==> before match variable,
$& ==> match variable and
$' ==> after match variable.
If the code doesn't like you want it you might have to play around with
regular expressions!
Regards.

On Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 2:38 AM, Ryan Lagola wrote:

> Hello,
> I have been scratching my head on this problem and was wondering if someone
> can help me out. Basically I need to take a raw list of data (a snippet of
> it is below my email) and create another file with the information
> formatted
> in the following format: "Date: Category: Winner." The example of the
> finished file is as follows:
>
> 1934: Actor: Clark Gable
> 1934: Actress: Claudette Colbert
> 1934: Art Direction: The Merry Widow
>
> As I am not a programmer by nature, I'm trying to figure out how to work
> out
> the logic of this program. The "Date" does not repeat with each category
> but only changes when the next year of results is displayed in the data
> file. How do I setup my logic to support this? Any help that can be
> provided would be much appreciated.
>
> Just an FYI - here is my crack at finding the lines that match each
> attribute:
> Date: print $_ if $_ =~ /^(\d{4})*/
> #look for four digits at the beginning of a string
> Category: print $_ if $_ =~ /^[A-Z]+/
> #look for one or more all caps characters at the beginning of a string
> Winner: print $_ if $_ =~ /(\*)*(--)/
> #look for a field that starts with an asterisks and contains "--"
>
> I am open to comments on my regular expressions. Thanks!
>
>
> ==================== SNIPPET OF RAW DATA FILE ====================
>
> 1934 (7th),
> ACTOR,
> *,"Clark Gable -- It Happened One Night {""Peter Warne""}"
> ACTRESS,
> *,"Claudette Colbert -- It Happened One Night {""Ellie Andrews""}"
> ART DIRECTION,
> *,"The Merry Widow -- Cedric Gibbons, Fredric Hope"
> ,[NOTE: won by two votes]
> ASSISTANT DIRECTOR,
> *,Viva Villa! -- John Waters
> CINEMATOGRAPHY,per
> *,Cleopatra -- Vicxtor Milner
> DIRECTING,
> *,It Happened One Night -- Frank Capra
> FILM EDITING,
> *,Eskimo -- Conrad Nervig
> MUSIC (Scoring),
> *,"One Night of Love -- Columbia Studio Music Department, Louis Silvers,
> head of department (Thematic Music by Victor Schertzinger and Gus Kahn)"
> MUSIC (Song),
> *,"""The Continental"" from The Gay Divorcee -- Music by Con Conrad; Lyrics
> by Herb Magidson"
> OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION,
> *,It Happened One Night -- Columbia
> SHORT SUBJECT (Cartoon),
> *,"The Tortoise and the Hare -- Walt Disney, Producer"
> SHORT SUBJECT (Comedy),
> *,"La Cucaracha -- Kenneth Macgowan, Producer"
> SHORT SUBJECT (Novelty),
> *,"City of Wax -- Stacy Woodard and Horace Woodard, Producers"
> SOUND RECORDING,
> *,"One Night of Love -- Columbia Studio Sound Department, John Livadary,
> Sound Director"
> WRITING (Adaptation),
> *,It Happened One Night -- Robert Riskin
> WRITING (Original Story),
> *,Manhattan Melodrama -- Arthur Caesar
> SPECIAL AWARD,
> *,"To Shirley Temple, in grateful recognition of her outstanding
> contribution to screen entertainment during the year 1934."
> SCIENTIFIC OR TECHNICAL AWARD (Class II),
> *,"To ELECTRICAL RESEARCH PRODUCTS, INC. for their development of the
> Vertical Cut Disc Method of recording sound for motion pictures (hill and
> dale recording). [Sound]"
> SCIENTIFIC OR TECHNICAL AWARD (Class III),
> *,"To COLUMBIA PICTURES CORPORATION for their application of the Vertical
> Cut Disc Method (hill and dale recording) to actual studio production, with
> their recording of the sound on the picture One Night of Love. [Sound]"
> *,To BELL AND HOWELL COMPANY for their development of the Bell and Howell
> Fully Automatic Sound and Picture Printer. [Laboratory]
> ,
> 1935 (8th),
> ACTOR,
> *,"Victor McLaglen -- The Informer {""Gypo Nolan""}"
> ACTRESS,
> *,"Bette Davis -- Dangerous {""Joyce Heath""}"
> ART DIRECTION,
> *,The Dark Angel -- Richard Day
> ASSISTANT DIRECTOR,
> *,"The Lives of a Bengal Lancer -- Clem Beauchamp, Paul Wing"
> CINEMATOGRAPHY,
> *,A Midsummer Night's Dream -- Hal Mohr
> ,[NOTE: THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL NOMINATION. Write-in candidate.]
> DANCE DIRECTION,
> *,"Dave Gould -- ""I've Got a Feeling You're Fooling"" number from Broadway
> Melody of 1936; and ""Straw Hat"" number from Folies Bergere"
> DIRECTING,
> *,The Informer -- John Ford
> FILM EDITING,
> *,A Midsummer Night's Dream -- Ralph Dawson
> MUSIC (Scoring),
> *,"The Informer -- RKO Radio Studio Music Department, Max Steiner, head of
> department (Score by Max Steiner)"
> MUSIC (Song),
> *,"""Lullaby of Broadway"" from Gold Diggers of 1935 -- Music by Harry
> Warren; Lyrics by Al Dubin"
> OUTSTANDING PRODUCTION,
> *,Mutiny on the Bounty -- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
> SHORT SUBJECT (Cartoon),
> *,"Three Orphan Kittens -- Walt Disney, Producer"
> SHORT SUBJECT (Comedy),
> *,"How to Sleep -- Jack Chertok, Producer"
> SHORT SUBJECT (Novelty),
> *,Wings over Mt. Everest -- Gaumont British and Skibo Productions
> SOUND RECORDING,
> *,"Naughty Marietta -- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio Sound Department, Douglas
> Shearer, Sound Director"
> WRITING (Original Story),
> *,"The Scoundrel -- Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur"
> WRITING (Screenplay),
> *,The Informer -- Dudley Nichols
> ,"[NOTE: Mr. Nichols initially refused the award, but Academy records
> indicate that he was in possession of a statuette by 1949.]"
> SPECIAL AWARD,
> *,"To David Wark Griffith, for his distinguished creative achievements as
> director and producer and his invaluable initiative and lasting
> contributions to the progress of the motion picture arts."
> SCIENTIFIC OR TECHNICAL AWARD (Class II),
> *,To AGFA ANSCO CORPORATION for their development of the Agfa infra-red
> film. [Film]
> *,To EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY for their development of the Eastman
> Pola-Screen.
> [Lenses and Filters]
> SCIENTIFIC OR TECHNICAL AWARD (Class III),
> *,"To METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER STUDIO for the development of anti-directional
> negative and positive development by means of jet turbulation, and the
> application of the method to all negative and print processing of the
> entire
> product of a major producing company. [Laboratory]"
> *,"To WILLIAM A. MUELLER of Warner Bros.-First National Studio Sound
> Department for his method of dubbing, in which the level of the dialogue
> automatically controls the level of the accompanying music and sound
> effects. [Sound]"
> *,"To MOLE-RICHARDSON COMPANY for their development of the ""Solar-spot""
> spot lamps. [Lighting]"
> *,To DOUGLAS SHEARER and METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER STUDIO SOUND DEPARTMENT for
> their automatic control system for cameras and sound recording machines and
> auxiliary stage equipment. [Stage Operations]
> *,"To ELECTRICAL RESEARCH PRODUCTS, INC. for their study and development of
> equipment to analyze and measure flutter resulting from the travel of the
> film through the mechanisms used in the recording and reproduction of
> sound.
> [Sound]"
> *,"To PARAMOUNT PRODUCTIONS, INC. for the design and construction of the
> Paramount transparency air turbine developing machine. [Laboratory]"
> *,"To NATHAN LEVINSON, Director of Sound Recording for Warner Bros.-First
> National Studio, for the method of intercutting variable density and
> variable area sound tracks to secure an increase in the effective volume
> range of sound recorded for motion pictures. [Sound]"
> ,
>

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