[Cialug] Text Processing Choices

[Matthew Nuzum]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 8:56 AM, Daniel A.
Ramaley<daniel.ramaley at drake.edu> wrote:
> sed, awk, grep, sort, cut, comm, perl. Not necessarily in that order.

Except for perl, I'm with Daniel. If the command line tools don't work
out I often move to a spreadsheet. For example I commonly need to get
a bunch of data ready to put into a database so I will bring the raw
data into Calc. If possible in a way that I can have columns, but if
not I'll put all of it in one column and use some formulas to split it
out into cols and then in the far right column generate a formula that
builds my sql query that can be pasted in and run. For example:

="INSERT INTO table values ("&A2&", '"&A3&"',"&A4&");"
(and then fill down)

Of course this fails if you have more than about 65k rows though I
haven't had this prob in a while and I think some spreadsheets
actually handle more now.

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
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