[ILUG] Little code, please

[Proinnsias Breathnach]

On Tue, May 02, 2006 at 06:25:27PM +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> Talking of scripts, could you please tell me
> the simplest script to search through "refer-like" files
> with items separated by a blank line, eg
> 
> %n Tom
> %t 3
> 
> %n Peter
> %t 17
> 
> I'd like a script (in any known language), say "foo", so that
> "foo Tom" would print out
> 
> %n Tom
> %t 3
> 

Well - something like this would work (it's quick and dirty, and there
are probably cleaner / faster ways ... ):

[proinnsias at butler ~]$ cat foo.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl

my $printflag = 0 ;
my $searchstring = shift ;

while (<>) {
        if ($_ =~ /$searchstring/ ) {
                $printflag = 1 ;
        } elsif ($_ =~ /^$/) {  # Empty Line
                $printflag = 0 ;
        }

        if ($printflag == 1) {
                print $_ ;
        }

}
[proinnsias at butler ~]$ cat foo
%n Tom
%t 3

%n Peter
%t 17

[proinnsias at butler ~]$ ./foo.pl Tom foo
%n Tom
%t 3