Maintaining a variable(?) to prefix future text

Peter Kaufman

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Apr 30, 2020, 3:13:04 PM4/30/20

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Folks,

I love BBEdit (v13.0.6) and hope this can do the trick! I would rather not have to resort to sed/awk/cut/paste.

INPUT:

April 2020

(Individual talks will be added before the end of the month for a while.)

[play audio] 25 Being Responsible

[play audio] 24 In the Land of Wrong View

[play audio] 05 Owners of Our Actions

[play audio] 04 Wealth & Strength

[play audio] 03 A Skillful Heart

[play audio] 02 Stop & Think

[play audio] 01 A Mirror for the Mind

March 2020

Full month zip

[play audio] 31 Worry

[play audio] 30 Put the Other Person’s Heart in Yours

[play audio] 29 Protection Through Mindfulness

[play audio] 28 Inner Worlds

[play audio] 27 Four Mountains Moving In

[play audio] 26 Interdependence

[play audio] 25 Endurance & Contentment

[play audio] 24 Alone Together

[play audio] 23 Remembering Luang Lung

[play audio] 12 Virtues and Values (Brazil)

February 2020

Full month zip

[play audio] 16 Between Right & Wrong

[play audio] 14 Know the Dhamma by Its Results

[play audio] 13 The Third and a Half Noble Truth

OUTPUT:

Each [play audio] \d\d would be replaced with the previous YYYY-MONTH-\d\d

e.g.

2020-April-25 Being Responsible

: : :

2020-April-01 A Mirror for the Mind

2020-March-31 Worry

: : :

I know how to start this incantation:

\W*(January|February|March|April|May|June|July|August|September|October|November|December) (\d\d\d\d)\n.*$(\W*\[play audio\] (\d\d) (.*$)){1,}

But not how to do this. Are there variables one can assign within BBEdit? I hate to leave BBEdit in order to apply sed/awk/grep.

Thanks in advance!!!

Peter

Neil Faiman

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Apr 30, 2020, 5:04:24 PM4/30/20

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As far as I know, there is no one-pass solution to this problem. (I'd love to know if there is.) But there' a simple quick-and-dirty multi-pass solution. Here's one way to do it.

First, add a some character that doesn't occur anywhere else in the file to the beginning of each month line. I'm using a bullet here:

Find: ^\s*[a-z]+ \d{4}$

Replace: •&

Replace all

Gives us

• April 2020

(Individual talks will be added before the end of the month for a while.)

[play audio] 25 Being Responsible

[play audio] 24 In the Land of Wrong View

[play audio] 05 Owners of Our Actions

[play audio] 04 Wealth & Strength

[play audio] 03 A Skillful Heart

[play audio] 02 Stop & Think

[play audio] 01 A Mirror for the Mind

• March 2020

Full month zip

[play audio] 31 Worry

[play audio] 30 Put the Other Person’s Heart in Yours

...

Next, write a pattern to replace the first (if any) [play audio] line in each month:

Find: (?s)(^•\s*([a-z]+) (\d{4})\n[^•]*?)(\[play audio\] (\d\d))

Replace: \1\3-\2-\5

Replace all

Gives us:

• April 2020

(Individual talks will be added before the end of the month for a while.)

2020-April-25 Being Responsible

[play audio] 24 In the Land of Wrong View

[play audio] 05 Owners of Our Actions

[play audio] 04 Wealth & Strength

[play audio] 03 A Skillful Heart

[play audio] 02 Stop & Think

[play audio] 01 A Mirror for the Mind

• March 2020

Full month zip

2020-March-31 Worry

[play audio] 30 Put the Other Person’s Heart in Yours

[play audio] 29 Protection Through Mindfulness

...

Now just keep hitting Cmd-Shift-= repeatedly, replacing the first unprocessed line of each month each time, until it fails. (If you have no more than a hundred [play audio] lines per month, this will take no more than a couple of minutes — i.e., much less time than it would take to find a smarter solution. If you have a thousand lines in a month, you will need some other solution.

Finally, one last search-and-replace will delete all the bullet that you inserted in step one.

Regards,

Neil Faiman

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ctfishman

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May 1, 2020, 8:36:30 AM5/1/20

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Hi Peter -

You can do this with a text filter. Save the following code in a file called something like "date_prefixer.pl", put it in your text filters folder, then go back to your file and choose Text -> Apply Text Filter - date_prefixer from the menubar.

What the script does:

1) Loops through each line in your selection (if you have one) or the entire file (if you don't).

2) If the line starts with a word, followed by a space, followed by a 4-digit number, the value of the variable "$date" is set to the number, plus a dash, plus the word, plus another dash.

3) If the line starts with "[play audio]", followed by a space, followed by a two-digit number, the text "[play audio] " is replaced with the current value of "$date", then the line is printed.

4) If neither match matches, then nothing is done and the script continues on to the next line.

I set the script to do exactly what your example says. If you want it to use the corresponding two-digit number for the month, change this line:

$date = $2 . "-$1-";

to

$date = $2 . "-$month{$1}-";

#!/usr/bin/perl

$month{"January"} = "01";

$month{"February"} = "02";

$month{"March"} = "03";

$month{"April"} = "04";

$month{"May"} = "05";

$month{"June"} = "06";

$month{"July"} = "07";

$month{"August"} = "08";

$month{"September"} = "09";

$month{"October"} = "10";

$month{"November"} = "11";

$month{"December"} = "12";

while (<>) {

if ( $_ =~ /^([^ ]+) ([0-9]{4})/ ) {

$date = $2 . "-$1-";

}

elsif ( $_ =~ /^\[Play Audio\] ([0-9]{2}.+)/i ) {

print $date . $1 . "\n";

}

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