Carl Lundstedt wrote:
1...2...3...4...I smell a scripting war!!!
Guilty! Obi-Wan wrote:
Perl has its uses, but is overly bloated for such a simple operation. Sed(1) does a wonderful job of this sort of thing. Assuming you want to keep the first and last parentheses: # echo "abc (asdf) asdf (asdf) 1234 (xyz) 67" | sed -e 's/([^)]*)[^)]*)/()/' abc () 1234 (xyz) 67
Overly bloated? Instead of sed -e use perl -ple and escape any parens outside of []'s. Now sed and perl do the exact same thing in your examples.So when specifically hunting parens I concede sed is less line-noisy. But "overly bloated"? Really? -poke- -laugh-
j Omaha Perl Mongers: http://omaha.pm.org