[Chicago-talk] zipcode

[Steven Lembark]

-- "Dooley, Michael" <Dooley.Michael at con-way.com>

> ok if you have a CSV file that has 12+ fields.
> on the 12th field you have a zipcode. if the Zip is 7 character put a
> space between the 4th and 5th character.
>
> I don't know why I am having this brain blockage but:
>
> 1) is there a better way to do the regex below?
> 2) how do I do the inline edit?
>
> what I have below works but I know there has to be a much better way to
> edit the zipcode.
>
># !/usr/bin/perl -w
>
> use strict;
>
> while (<> ) {
> if (/(\w*,\w*,\w*,\w*,\w*,\w*,\w*,\w*,\w*,\w*,\w*,)(\w*)(.*)/) {
>         if (length($2) == 7) {
>                 my $zipstart=substr($2,0,4);
>                 my $zipend=substr($2,4,3);
>                 print "$1$zipstart $zipend$3\n";
>                 next;
>         }
>
>         print "$1$2$3\n";
> }
> }

Don't use a regex to split up the data on commas for one:
use split. Then take the 12th field and play with it. If
you need to then rejoin the data:

	my $sepchar = ',';
	my $regex /$sepchar/o;

	...

	local $\ = '';
	local $, = $sepchar;

	for( @input );
	{
		my @fieldz = split $regex;

		$fieldz[12] =~ s/^(.{4} /$1 /
			if length $fieldz[12] == 7;

		# never chopmed it, the newline should
		# still be at the end.

		print @fieldz;
	}

--
Steven Lembark                               2930 W. Palmer
Workhorse Computing                       Chicago, IL 60647
                                            +1 888 359 3508