newbie - howto replace text from two files with sed?

[mickd]

I am hoping a sed expert can help me here.

I'm trying to replace a number from one file with text to a matching
numbered list from another file. For example:

description.txt
July 1 [25] Vegas Show
June 5 [1] Miami Run
Sep 20 [120] Houston

list.txt
1. JohnMalvick
2. GabeCron
3. JaneDoe
...
25. JoeGuber
...
120. ElinZoe

output.txt
July 1 [JoeGuber] Vegas Show
June 5 [JohnMalvick] Miami Run
Sep 20 [ElinZoe] Houston

I've done basic scripts with grep and sed but I am having a little bit
of trouble putting something like this together. Any help will be
greatly appreciated!!

[Pascal Bourguignon]

"mickd" <micha...@adelphia.net> writes:

This is a job for awk:

[pjb@thalassa tmp]$ ./s.awk

July 1 [JoeGuber] Vegas Show
June 5 [JohnMalvick] Miami Run
Sep 20 [ElinZoe] Houston

[pjb@thalassa tmp]$ cat s.awk
#!/bin/bash
awk '
BEGIN {
FS=". ";
while(getline <"list.txt"){
type[$1]=$2;
}
FS="[][]";
}
{
printf "%s[%s]%s\n",$1,type[$2],$3;
}
'<description.txt
[pjb@thalassa tmp]$ cat description.txt

July 1 [25] Vegas Show
June 5 [1] Miami Run
Sep 20 [120] Houston

[pjb@thalassa tmp]$ cat list.txt

1. JohnMalvick
2. GabeCron
3. JaneDoe

25. JoeGuber
120. ElinZoe
[pjb@thalassa tmp]$

--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/

HEALTH WARNING: Care should be taken when lifting this product,
since its mass, and thus its weight, is dependent on its velocity
relative to the user.

[John Savage]

Use sed (or some other editor) to massage your file "list.txt" into
file "list.scr" comprising a bunch of commands for a later run of sed,
viz.,
s/\[1]/[JohnMalvick]/
s/\[2]/[GabeCron]/
s/\[3]/[JaneDoe]/
s/\[25]/[JoeGuber]/
s/\[120]/[ElinZoe]/

Then you will have what you want when you run:
sed -f list.scr description.txt

If your database was huge it would be worth a bit of extra effort to make
this more efficient, but for what you illustrated this code is just fine.
--
John Savage (my news address is not valid for email)