Re: [mv] text file hard tab processing utility available

["Bill Randle" <billr@exgate.tek.com>]

******    message to minivend-users from "Bill Randle" <billr@exgate.tek.com>     ******

On Apr 27,  5:04am, Steve Fairhead wrote:
} Subject: [mv] text file hard tab processing utility available
} ******    message to minivend-users from "Steve Fairhead"
<steve@sfdesign.co.uk>     ******
}
} Thus LINEPROC can be used to turn a plain text file, arranged in fixed
} columns using spaces, into a hard-tab delimited database, with user-defined
} tab stops, and all extraneous whitespace stripped out.
}
} 3) It would be easy to port this to Unix. I'd happily provide all source
} code (ANSI C); it's not rocket science. (Although I wouldn't be too
} surprised to learn there are standard Unix tools to do this sort of
} line-parsing thang.)

For converting between spaces and tabs on Unix the expand/unexpand
utlities do this. Expand converts tab to spaces and unexpand converts
spaces to tabs.

In the vein of useful little utilies, here's a simple one line shell
script I use when viewing tab delimted text files. I'm sure you've
noticed that the lines can get very long when you have a lot fields,
each seperated by a tab. This script just replaces the tabs with a '|'
to compress the line into something a little easier to read. It also
helps in seeing which fields are empty. You can replace the '|' with
any character of your choice.

tab2bar:
	#!/bin/sh
	tr '\t' '|'

I put it in the products directory, then use it like this:
	more products.txt |tab2bar


	-Bill Randle
	billr@exgate.tek.com
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