[ILUG] Little code, please

[Brian Foster]

  | From: nexor <nexor at fnet.pl>
  | Date: Tue, 2 May 2006 18:45:36 -0500
  | 
  | On Tuesday 02 May 2006 12:25, 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... you've asked for something simple  [ ... ]
  | Contents of foo.pl:
  |[... c.13 lines of incomprehensible perl(1) gibberish deleted... ]

 oh for something's sake, this is a trivial one-liner
 (for the example input and output shown):

   gawk  'BEGIN { RS = "" } $1 == "%n" && $2 == "Tom" { print }'

 parameterisation of the "Tom" is left as an exercise to
 the reader.  it can also be shorter (another exercise
 left to the reader).

 (in fact, I _thought_ something like this was one of the
 examples in the gawk(1) man page, but I cannot find it.)

cheers!
	-blf-
-- 
Experienced (20+ yrs) kernel/software Eng: | Brian Foster   Montpellier,
 • Unix, embedded, &tc;  • Linux;  • doc;  | blf at utvinternet.ie   FRANCE
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