On Sun, 23 Jul 2006 10:20:02 -0400 Michael Stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 23, 2006 at 09:48:24AM -0400, AC wrote: > >While we can devise many roundabout ways to parse such output, it > >would be better to do the coding once and encapsulate that function > >in some utility, either a new one or an existing one well suited to > >it... > > Which is why I suggested perl and awk or even sed. They've been > around a really long time, and they are suited for parsing > complicated formats. I don't understand. 'perl', 'awk', and 'sed' are, (to varying degrees), general purpose languages, but 'cut' is a single purpose utility. Solving a problem in a general purpose language does little to improve a single purpose utility. It's puzzling that you say: "complicated formats". Are you suggesting that the Bourne shell's traditional positional parameters constitute a "complicated" format, or are relatively more complicated than the fixed-length fields that 'cut' already supports? If so, that is a debatable point -- it might be argued that the shell is a much _simpler_ format, because there's _less_ for humans to remember, since there's no need for users to think about the widths of white space delimiters. A math analogy: Topology is "simpler" than Euclidean Geometry because Topology disregards angles and length. Granted, in some cases a simpler format may be harder to program, and perhaps this is such a case -- but it's not especially hard, since every Bourne compatible shell already does it. For maximum programmer laziness 'cut' could even call the shell to do its parsing, then translate that to a fixed length data format, then do whatever it needs to. Speculation: apparently we're using terms like 'complicated' and 'simple' as applied to data formats in different ways -- I tend to use these terms from an abstract view, whereas you seem to be (correct me if I'm wrong) using them from the view of how difficult they'd be to program, or reprogram and retrofit. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
