Re: How to Teach Perl to Scholars in the Humanities

[johndageek]

Question, how do they search now?

Have them find particular text using their current method, then try one of the two below.

Of course perl needs to be on their box for the second one. But many people will gravitate toward something they are convinced is better/faster/easier than the way they are doing it now.

if they are using unix or cygwin try
grep -n text_to_search_for filename

#!/usr/bin/perl
## put your file name in below
$your_file="file name goes here";
##
open in, "$your_file" or die "could not open $your_file\n";
## loops through file
while (<in>)
{
  $line_count++;
## in the line below put the text to search for  between the / and /
  print "$line_count - $_" if (/text to find/);
}

Good luck, HTH!
dageek