Re: Converting text file to CSV format

[BrowserUk]

Using perl's -n and -l switches on the shebang line of a short script in conjuction with a few global variables and a BEGIN block make this kind of processing the epitomy of the perl 'backronym' Practical Extraction & Reporting Language. Real bread&butter stuff.

You will probably need to strengthen the regexes to suit your data, and you may need to adjust the format used for the printf somewhat, but this should get you some of the way there.

The only slightly trick part if the $headerProcessed var and the use of eof which isn't very well described.

Usage: yourscriptname files* > unified.log

If your on a platform that expands wildcard arguments on the command line, the comment out the first line of the BEGIN block. The second line will list the expanded wilcards to STDERR which may or may not be useful in use.

#! perl -nlw
use strict;
use vars qw[$format $headerProcessed $author $MRnumber $releaseNo $fea
+tureNo $featureName $filename $date];

BEGIN{
    @ARGV = map{ glob } @ARGV;
    print STDERR "Processing files @ARGV";
    $format = '%-25s ' x 9 . $/;
    $headerProcessed = 0;
    printf $format,
        'File Name,',
        'Author(Core ID),',
        'Date (MM/DD/YEAR),',
        'Release No.,',
        'MR No.,',
        'Feature No.,',
        'Feature Name,',
        'Paragrah No.,',
        'Requirement No.';
}

$headerProcessed = 0 if eof;
unless ( $headerProcessed ) {
    $author = $1 . ','            if m[^Author \(Core ID\)  : (.*$)];
    $MRnumber = $1 . ','          if m[^MR Number         : (.*$)];
    $releaseNo = $1 . ','         if m[^Release Number    : (.*$)];
    ($featureNo, $featureName) =
        ($1 . ',', $2 . ',')      if m[^Feature           : (.*?) : (.
+*$)];
    $filename = $1 . ','          if m[^File Name         : (.*$)];
    $date = $1 . ','              if m[^Modification Date : (.*$)];
    $headerProcessed = 1          if m[^Paragraph Number    Requiremen
+t Number   Last Modified Release$];
} else {
    printf $format,
        $filename, $author, $date, $releaseNo, $MRnumber, $featureNo, 
+$featureName,
        (split/\s+/)[0,1];
}

__END__
C:\test>244122 244122.dat?
Processing files 244122.dat1 244122.dat2
File Name,                Author(Core ID),          Date (MM/DD/YEAR),
+        Release No.,              MR No.,                   Feature N
+o.,              Feature Name,             Paragrah No.,             
+Requirement No.
cpsfs_sdu_setup.fm,       az1287,                   10/24/2001,       
+        16.1,                     sc018498.14,              na,      
+                 Add IP,                   SDUSETUP-SDU-249          
+CPSFS-SDUSETUP-224
cpsfs_sdu_setup.fm,       bz1287,                   10/24/2001,       
+        16.1,                     sc018498.14,              na,      
+                 Add IP,                   SDUSETUP-SDU-249          
+CPSFS-SDUSETUP-224

C:\test>

---

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