Using sed to add carriage retuns and line numbers.

Optimistic · 04-07-2005, 07:57 PM

I think that sed will be the right tool for this job. Here is what I'm trying to do: Take a block of text (like an essay) and turn it into a database where each sentence becomes one field and each sentence gets assigned a number based on the order. So, I thougt that I could use sed to add the returns (just have it look for a '.' (or some other punctuation marks) and insert a '\r' after it. But, how can I get sed to add the line numbers? Would awk be better for that?

An example of what I want to do:

Turn this:

Code:

This is a sentence of an essay.  There will be many sentences.  
Some sentences are long and some sentences are short, but all end 
with punctuation.

Into this:

Code:

1<tab>This is a sentence of an essay.
2<tab>There will be many sentences.
3<tab> Some sentences are long and some sentences are short, but all end with punctuation.

The "<tab>s" will be actual tabs, not written out.

puffinman · 04-07-2005, 08:18 PM

I would use perl...

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

undef $/; # slurp mode on

# foreach argument
foreach $file (@ARGV) {

  # slurp up this file
  open(FH, "<$file") or die "Couldn't open $file: $!";
  $everything = <FH>;

  # split into sentences
  @lines = split /(?<=[.?!])\s*/, $everything;

  # save sentences from this file
  push @all_lines, @lines;
}

# decide how many leading zeros to have in the number
$line_number = ("0"x (log(@all_lines)/log(10)))."1";

# an alternative to the above it to use a fixed number like so
# $line_number = "000001";

# print the result to stdout
foreach $line (@all_lines) {
  print $line_number++,"\t$line\n";
}

Optimistic · 04-07-2005, 08:33 PM

Excellent, thanks puffinman!

mjrich · 04-07-2005, 08:42 PM

Code:

sed 's/\.[[:space:]]/\.\n/g' <filename> | sed = - | sed 'N;s/\n/\t/'

Blimey - Sed hasn't turned out to be more succinct than the venerable Perl, has it...

Cheers,

mj

puffinman · 04-07-2005, 08:55 PM

In this case, no, because your code doesn't put one sentence per line. And I was writing for readability, not for brevity. But if I must:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
undef $/;
while (<>) { push @s, split /(?<=[.?!])\s*/ }
printf "%05.d\t$_\n",++$l foreach @s;

homey · 04-07-2005, 09:06 PM

Maybe this...

Code:

#!/bin/bash
a=/home/file.txt
cat ${a} | tr '\n' ' ' | sed -e 's/\.[[:blank:]]*/\.\n/g' | \
awk -F"." '{OFS="\t"}{print NR".",$1"."}' > file1.txt

puffinman · 04-07-2005, 09:30 PM

Yes, this is oneupmanship, but I've squeezed it into 90 characters (counting the shebang), and it works for any number of input files, and it works for any ending punctuation (not just periods). Before you ask, the answer is: no life at all.

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
undef $/;while(<>){printf"%05.d\t$_\n",++$l foreach split/(?<=[.?!])\s*/}

homey · 04-07-2005, 09:47 PM

Yes, but how about this?

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
undef $/;while(<> ){printf"%1.d\t$_\n",++$l foreach split/(?<=[.?!])\s*/}

Optimistic · 04-07-2005, 09:51 PM

Ahh, homey I had completely forgotten about a bash sed combo. Here is a little something I cooked up based on your script which is a bit more interactive:

Code:

#! /bin/bash
echo -n "File to split?"
read -e FILE
a=$FILE
cat ${a} | tr '\n' ' ' | sed -e 's/\.[[:blank:]]*/\.\n/g' | \
awk -F"." '{OFS="\t"}{print NR".",$1"."}' > OUT$FILE

Edit: puffinman, you rule!

homey · 04-07-2005, 10:15 PM

Cool!
Actually, I wasn't competing against anyone. I just felt like posting it anyway even if everyone but me is a speed typer.

puffinman · 04-07-2005, 11:46 PM

Thanks Optimistic. I tend to write utilities more like the standard unix ones -- non-interactive so they can be used with pipes or redirection, or in other scripts. I hope some of this has been useful to you, or maybe has gotten more people interested in perl

. In fact, sed and awk were the inspiration for a lot of perl features, which is why I read this thread in the first place.

Optimistic · 04-08-2005, 01:13 AM

puffinman: I think that I will look into perl, I probably should have long ago, but after reading a few essays by Larry Wall and some reviews about how 'crazy' perl was, I kinda decided to explore other places. Looks like I was wrong, for your script was quite elegant. I'm not a programmer (I'm one of those wierd philosopher-logicians), but I do like an elegant script and a language that allows for creativity.

Thanks agian everybody!