[ILUG] regexp / php question

[Brian Foster]

  | Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 14:37:37 +0100
  | From: "John P. Looney" <valen at tuatha.org>
  | 
  |  This is a trick7y one, that slightly hurts my head. I'm wondering
  | is there an easy way that I don't know of, to solve this:
  | 
  |  I have a text file, with zero or more patterns like:
  | 
  |  send an email to 'Looney' <email at domain.com> and tell him about it.
  | 
  |  I'd like to replace 'Looney' with <a href="thing?Looney"> and
  | email at domain.com with a href="mailto:email at domain.com".

 which would produce:

     send an email to <a href="thing?Looney"> <a href="mailto:email at domain.com"> and tell him about it.

 assuming that is supposed to be legal HTML, it is not.
 where do the </a>s go?

 also, what <a href=...> text is inside the anchor </a>?

 finally, is the “thing?” part of the 1st href the same
 for all Looney's?   (I understand each line may have a
 different Looney and email at domain.com, correct?)

 it _looks_ like a job for sed(1), probably a 1-liner, as
 soon as we understand what it is that is to be produced.

cheers!
	-blf-
-- 
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