[CLUE-Tech] Simpler way of parsing data

[Match Grun]

Being a programmer, I understand your friends point of view. My solution
is simpler:

1)	If this is a one-off exercise, then cut & paste is fine.

2)	If this is a repetitive chore that needs to be automated,
	then write a custom program or script that performs the
	desired process.

3)	If this is a repetitive task that needs to be performed,
	and you have chosen to cut & paste, that is also Ok.
	However, if you need to give it to someone else to do,
	then there is something else that can break. In this
	case, follow step 2.

:-)
Match

On Sat, 14 Apr 2001 23:43:37 -0600
Kevin Cullis <kevincu at orci.com> wrote:

> Hey all,
> 
> I've been having a discussion with a programmer friend of mine and it's
> funny how we both have different views of the same problem.  I sometimes
> want to "cut and paste" data from the web browser into VIM in order to
> parse the data into useable form, such as records to be inported into a
> database. However, he has stated, along with other programmers I know,
> that I should save the file in HTML and then parse the HTML out of the
> file.  However, while both achieve the same results, my programming
> friends way takes considerably more work and knowledge than my "cut and
> paste" method.  In fact, all I have in my file is the data with a large
> number of spaces which require ONLY one command to use in order to
> remove the multiple spaces rather than his PERL or other method to
> parsing HTML tags.
> 
> Why am I mentioning this?  Because most new people to Linux can be
> bombarded with more technical approaches to a problem when sometimes a
> simple problem requires a simple solution.
> 
> In VIM, I type:
> 
> :%s/   *//g
> 
> to remove all multiple spaces leaving only my data in fields.  However,
> my friends approach can be used for more complex approaches to other
> problems which I can consider in future projects.
> 
> Just a comment.
> 
> Kevin
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