Hi, You have solved my problem, the key was in your script. I had not been reading the file in binary mode and so the different LF and CR where getting lost.
Thanks I did run the script you sent which was very help full and I will store that away as I'm sure it will come in use. Script output Obj_ID 09 In_link 0d 0a WBX586 09 2SV_WBX123 0d 0a WBX2367 09 2SV_WBX123 0d 0a WBX2428 09 2SV_WBX123 0a WBX_APPS169 0d 0a WBX588 09 2SV_WBX123 0d 0a WBX2432 09 2SV_WBX123 0d 0a WBX589 09 2SV_WBX123 0d 0a WBX2433 09 2SV_WBX123 0d 0a so it would appear I have field1_1 <TAB> field2_1 <LF> field2_2 <LF> .... field2_x <CR> <LF> With the binmode I can replace the LF with commas and then my script is ok. Thanks once more Andy -----Original Message----- From: R. Joseph Newton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 23 February 2004 05:50 To: Westcott Andrew-AWESTCO1 Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Help with end of line charaters Westcott Andrew-AWESTCO1 wrote: > Hi, > > I'm new to perl but need to write a script that takes a file and formats > lines. > > The file has to 2 fields that are tab separated and each field is made up of > items separated by some type of linefeed character. The end of the second > field is identified by another type of linefeed character. > > When I view the file in VIM the second linefeed shows as a ^M so there must > be a way of identifying these separately. > > I have tried searching for \r \n %CR %LF $VT $FF but nothing seems to give > the required effect. > > I need to run the script on a PC. > > Please can you offer some advice or possible places to look. > > Thanks > > Andy Maybe you should do a binary/text dump of the file. Chose a set of meanguful printing characters to print as character, printi anything outside of this range as hex. Something like: open IN, 'hello.obj' or die "Couldn't open damnfool file: $!"; binmode IN; local $/; my $whole_durn_thang = <IN>; my @chars = split //, $whole_durn_thang; my $alphabetic = 0; foreach $char (@chars) { if ($char =~ /[EMAIL PROTECTED]&*()_+ ,]/) { print "\n" unless $alphabetic; print $char; $alphabetic = 1; } else { print "\n" if $alphabetic; printf "%02x ", ord $char, $alphabetic = 0; } } It doesn't make for pretty output, nor does it exactly slap you in the face with its meaning, but it does give you some straight, solid information about the actual binary content of your file, in rough outline. Take a chunk of the output and examine it, and you should be able to make some reasonable conjectures about the way the file is structured. Presumably, most of your output should come as lines of plain text. It is the hex numbers between the lines that you want to watch for. Then you can filter out the unwanted ones when you process the file. Note: the code above is not intended for the processing itself, but as a utility for your preliminary analysis of the material. Joseph -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response>
