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I think what you're looking for is something like this:<br>
<blockquote><tt>$cnt = 6;<br>
$piece =~ s/(?<!\")\t/\"\t\"/ while $cnt--;</tt><br>
</blockquote>
This will substitute the first six tabs with quoted tabs. The
(?<!\") business is a "<i>zero-width negative look-behind assertion</i>"
that says it should only match tab chars that are not immediately
preceded by a quote char (but the quote char is not included in the
text to get substituted). since there is no /g modifier on the
substitution, we have to do it all with an in-line while loop
constrained by <tt>$cnt</tt>.<br>
<br>
Tim.<br>
<br>
Barron Snyder (CE CEN) wrote:
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">$piece =~ s/\t/\"\t\"/g;<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">With the above code I’m
searching for all tab
characters and replacing them with a tab surrounded by double-quotes.
Is there
a way without putting this in a coding loop, to replace say, only the
first three
instances it finds in $piece? It seems like a nice way to do this would
to be
able to replace the “g” with an integer indicating how many
replacements to do but it doesn’t seem to work like that <grin>.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">I’m parsing some columnar
data (7 columns) and I want
to put double-quotes around the first six columns. I’ve figured out a
way
to do it but it’s kind of clumsy. I thought you experts may be able to
show a Perl newbie a more elegant way to do it.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;">Thanks,<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span
style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoAutoSig" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><st1:PersonName
w:st="on"><font color="black" face="Tahoma" size="1"><span
style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Tahoma; color: black;">Barron
Snyder</span></font></st1:PersonName><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoAutoSig" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><font
color="black" face="Tahoma" size="1"><span
style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Tahoma; color: black;">Software
Development, Financial Systems Team</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoAutoSig" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><font
color="black" face="Tahoma" size="1"><span
style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Tahoma; color: black; font-weight: bold;">Whole
Foods Market, HQ</span></font></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font color="black" face="Tahoma" size="1"><span
style="font-size: 8pt; font-family: Tahoma; color: black;"><a
href="mailto:barron.snyder@wholefoods.com">barron.snyder@wholefoods.com</a></span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"><span
style="font-size: 12pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
_______________________________________________________________________
Timothy E. Peoples
Have Camel, Will Code
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:tim@toolman.org">tim@toolman.org</a>
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