PERL Miscellaneous - Question on perl script.

Author

Question on perl script.

Unix_Shell

2005-03-29, 3:58 pm

Hello Group,

I am very new to the perl language and don't know much about it. I had
a question & maybe someone can help me decipher/modify a script.

We have AIX 5.2 & the script (test.sh) contains the following perl
command:

/usr/bin/perl
-014pe's|^|"'$PAGE1FORM'".(/Page:\s+1\s/?"\n":"'$CONTFORMSFX'\n")|e'

Basically, two values are being passed to this script. Variable
PAGE1FORM will contain $1 (example: "m_inv01") and CONTFORMSFX will
contain $2 (example: "_09").

Basically, the script is invoked as follows:

../test.sh m_inv01 _09 < inrptfile > outrptfile

The perl command processes the inrptfile by substituting the first line
of page 1 with m_inv01 and substituting the first line from page 2
onwards with m_inv01_09 (concatenation of $1 & $2).

Question: How can I make it substitute something completely different
from page 2 onwards? So, if I run the script as follows:

../test.sh m_inv01 pg2form < inrptfile > outrptfile

I would like the perl command to substitute the first line of page 1
with m_inv01 (just like above); however I would like it to substitute
the first line from page 2 onwards with pg2form (i.e. with whatever I
pass as $2 and *not* a concatenation of $1 and $2).

Thanks for any help.
S

Joe Smith

2005-03-30, 8:57 pm

Unix_Shell wrote:

> /usr/bin/perl
> -014pe's|^|"'$PAGE1FORM'".(/Page:\s+1\s/?"\n":"'$CONTFORMSFX'\n")|e'
>
> the first line from page 2 onwards with pg2form (i.e. with whatever I
> pass as $2 and *not* a concatenation of $1 and $2).

/usr/bin/perl
-014pe's|^|(/Page:\s+1\s/?"'$PAGE1FORM'\n":"'$CONTFORMSFX'\n")|e'

I would recommend getting rid of test.sh and using a perl script
instead of a perl one-liner.
-Joe

Anno Siegel

2005-03-31, 8:56 am

Unix_Shell <sgtembe@hotmail.com> wrote in comp.lang.perl.misc:
> Hello Group,
>
> I am very new to the perl language and don't know much about it. I had
> a question & maybe someone can help me decipher/modify a script.
>
> We have AIX 5.2 & the script (test.sh) contains the following perl
> command:
>
> /usr/bin/perl
> -014pe's|^|"'$PAGE1FORM'".(/Page:\s+1\s/?"\n":"'$CONTFORMSFX'\n")|e'

That's a single perl command line, presumably embedded in a shell
script. Since you don't show the rest of the script, it's hard to
guess what is going on.

> Basically, two values are being passed to this script. Variable
> PAGE1FORM will contain $1 (example: "m_inv01") and CONTFORMSFX will
> contain $2 (example: "_09").
>
> Basically, the script is invoked as follows:
>
> ./test.sh m_inv01 _09 < inrptfile > outrptfile
>
> The perl command processes the inrptfile by substituting the first line
> of page 1 with m_inv01 and substituting the first line from page 2
> onwards with m_inv01_09 (concatenation of $1 & $2).

It does nothing of this sort. It doesn't substitute lines, it inserts
a new line in front of each form-feed-delimited record. If the record
contains the string "Page: 1 ", it inserts the concatenation of the
input variables, otherwise it only inserts the second variable.

> Question: How can I make it substitute something completely different
> from page 2 onwards? So, if I run the script as follows:

It should do that, provided appropriate input. Apparently your input
data doesn't conform to what the script assumes.

If you change the Perl code to

s|^|"'$PAGE1FORM'".($.==1?"\n":"'$CONTFORMSFX'\n")|e

it will base the notion of "first page" on the record count in $.

But most of all you should rewrite the script as a Perl script. Perl
command lines are for the command line. Perl scripts are best written
as Perl scripts, not shell scripts.

Anno

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