[Info-vax] Text processing on VMS

[Dave Froble]

On 10/13/2024 2:39 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 10/13/2024 11:04 AM, David Meyer wrote:
>> I've got a text file with data that I want to select lines matching
>> certain character strings, then extract string values from the selected
>> lines by character position. On Unix, I would use awk or Perl. Does VMS
>> have a similar tool, should I use my favorite programming language and
>> call the STR$ RTL, can I write a TPU script to do this, or should I
>> transfer the file to a Unix box and user awk or Perl? ;)
>
> Both Perl and gawk are available for VMS.
>
> VSI distribute Perl - Alpha and Itanium here
> https://vmssoftware.com/products/perl/ - x86-64 I believe comes with VMS
>
> Gawk you can get from the net -
> https://vms.process.com/scripts/fileserv/fileserv.com?GAWK
>
> You can also use some other script language: Python, Groovy etc..
>
> (I like Groovy)
>
> A traditional VMS language (Cobol,Fortran,Basic,Pascal) and builtin
> string functionality or STR$ calls will likely be much more code.
>
> Arne
>

Using SEARCH and then a simple Basic program is not that much work.

For example:

SEARCH File1.txt "some text" /output=File2.txt

1	On Error Goto 90

10	Open "file2" For Input as File 1%
	Open "File2" For Output as File 2%

20	Linput #1%, Z$
	Print #2%, Mid(Z$,?,?)
	Goto 20

90	GoTo 99 If ERR=11
	On Error GoTo 0

99	End

Simple
No having to know whatever is your favorite utility
I seriously doubt there would be much fewer characters

No, I didn't try it ...

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
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