From: James Calivar <amheiserbush@...>
Date: 2006-09-15T08:37:54+09:00
Subject: Newbie regexp question

Hello,

I'm trying to split a formatted text file into four separate columns. 
The data is comprised of lines of text that are bundled into four 
distinct columns, corresponding to a "Required versus Optional" 
variable, a requirement number, a requirement classification (R1=Rev 1, 
F=Future, I=Internal), and a textual description of the requirement.

My raw data looks like this in the input text file:

R [01]	R1	The system shall support "emergency call processing"
R [02]	R1	The system shall support "local call processing"
R [08]	F	The system shall provide a command-line user interface
R [723]	F	The system shall provide 6 10/100/1000 Ethernet interfaces
R [11]	F	The system shall support VoIP networks
R [398]	R1	The system shall contain 2 control boards
O [327]	I	The system should support hotswapping of all internal boards
R [19]	I	The system shall be able to detect transmission errors
R [631]	F	The system shall continue processing data as long as a call is 
active.

I've set up a loop to process each line in the input file, and what I'd 
like to get is four separate variables containing on a line-by-line 
basis the data corresponding to the four distinct columns.  The problem 
is my regexp experience is next to nothing, and I can't figure out how 
to extract the data I want since my fourth column contains whitespace 
(I'd have used that as my column separator otherwise).

Here's my loop:

File.open(textfile, "r") do |input_file|
  while line = input_file.gets
      output_file << line
  end
end

What can I replace the simple copy statement (output_file << line) with 
in order to get what I want?

Thanks in advance, I hope this question makes some sense.

James

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