[SGVLUG] Grep and the command line...
Emerson, Tom (*IC)
Tom.Emerson at wbconsultant.com
Fri Jun 1 11:37:16 PDT 2007
First off, I'll admit I'm NOT a regex "guru", but I'm getting better.
Now I have a search that sorta has me stumped (and part of the problem
is that I'm doing this using the microsoft "SFU"(*) version of grep at
the DOS command line)
Here's the deal: I have a tab-delimited file that appears to have a
mismatched "quote" somewhere. For example, the file /should/ look like
this:
-->key <tab>description..... <tab>123<tab>456<tab>etc.
Note that "description" is an essentially free-form text field. Any
actual "tabs" in the data (description) have been converted to "<t>".
Somewhere in the file I have this:
-->key <tab>"description.... <tab>123<tab>456<tab>etc.
Note the subtle inclusion of a double-quote character at the begninning
of the description, but not at the end. This "quote" character is part
of the actual data. As a result, the process importing the file sees
the initial quote character, strips it from the field, and looks for a
corresponding close-qoute. Since it doesn't see it before the CR/LF, it
includes THE REST OF THE LINE as part of the description!
So, how do I search for the sequence <tab><double-quote>?
Bonus points for "how do I actually type this in at a command line"?
(using the aforementioned DOS command line and Microsoft's version of
grep?)
Tom
(*) SFU = Services for Unix -- a freebie from MS that includes a bash
shell, tab-completion [within DOS!] and a fairly standard assortment of
"basic tools"
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