[Info-vax] Text processing on VMS

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 10/13/2024 2:57 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 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 ...

I have confidence in your VMS Basic skills.

:-)

A compound solution of SEARCH and a program is an option.

But in a relevant script language then it should be a one statement
problem (although in most cases splitting that one statement over
multiple lines is a good thing for readability).

import java.nio.file.*

Files.lines(Paths.get("login.com"))
      .filter(line -> line.contains("java"))
      .map(line -> line[2..12])
      .forEach(System.out::println)

output pos 2..12 (pos is 0 based!) from all lines of login.com
that contains "java".

Arne