From: Anders Selander <selander@...>
Date: 2002-02-20T03:40:28+09:00
Subject: Re: Perl IO to Ruby IO help needed

On Wed, Feb 20, 2002 at 03:02:04AM +0900, Craig Files wrote:
> The Perl file:
> 
> open (DEF, "<$input_def") || die "$0: cannot read $input_def\n";
> $/ = undef;		# read the entire file...
> $_ = <DEF>;		# ...into memory
> close(DEF);
> 
> $sep = "\003";		# Use cntl-C as a separator between elements
> s/\n\s*-\s/\n$sep /g;	# replace leading dashes with separator
> s/#[^\n]*\n/ /g;	# delete comments
> s/\s+/ /g;		# replace all newlines with space

Well, I better start to contribute to the list, as I have recieved help
from it myself. ;-)

A suggestion of a Ruby version:

file = File::readlines(input_def).each { 

	|line| line.gsub!(/^\s*-\s/, "\003") 
               line.gsub!(/#.*$/, " ")
               line.gsub!(/\s+/, " ")

               print "#{line}" 
}

I took the liberty to use ^ and $ instead of \n in the regexps.
Note that the first regexp only works on single dashed that always 
are followed by a whitespace.

Regards /Selander