I would like some advice on the best way to tackle a programming task.
I have a bunch of .htm pages that I want to convert into LaTex.
All of them seem to follow the same structure, so essentially what I'd like to do is:
Look for patterns that I want to keep and do something with them. Some examples:
a. transform <TITLE>A title</TITLE> to \chapter{A Title}
b. tranform <I>Italic text</I> to \em{Italic text}
c. transform <P>Some text</P> to Some text[newline]
In reality the <P> tags will be a bit more complex than this, since the HTML seems to be generated and there's a lot of <P>..</P> tags whose contents are of no interest to me since they don't contain any text.
I started working at this using string scanning but didn't get really far, owing to the fact that my experience so far with it was on rather short strings. But in this case I think I need to do things in a big loop.
$define collect tab
dir := "/home/northbae/Documents/magus/www.sacred-texts.com/grim/magus/"
filename := "ma"
number := 0
extension := ".htm"
# Process files ma100.htm to ma167.htm
every number := 100 to 167 do {
file := dir || filename || number || extension
# Open the current filename
currentFile := open(file, "r") | die("Could not open file.")
# Read the entire file as a string
text := reads(currentFile, 500000)
# Scan and extract items of interest
# This here is where I'm stuck. See comment below at rest := tab(0)
text ? {
tab(find("<TITLE>"))
move(7)
title := collect(upto("</TITLE>"))
write("\\chapter{",title, "}")
tab(find("<HR>\n</P>"))
move(9)
# I think this needs to be text := tab(0) and have this entire thing be a loop, like
# loop
# Scan
# extract
# make new subject be the rest of the string
# end loop
rest := tab(0)
}
}
But after reading a bit about SNOBOL style Pattern matching, ithis might be an easier way to go about it, if I want to look for patterns and replace them with another one, or rearrange peices of text in certain ways.
But I'm still unsure how you go about this in a loop, as the patterns I'm looking for could be found more than once in the document. What I want to do is scan for a pattern, do something, then reset the subject to be the rest of the subject, then loop back to be able to check for those patterns again and again.
I think just understanding how to set up a loop that scans for patterns then resets the subject to be current pos..tab(0), this should be helpful enough to allow be to keep at it.
Regards, and thanks for any pointers.
yves
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Hi there,
I would like some advice on the best way to tackle a programming task.
I have a bunch of .htm pages that I want to convert into LaTex.
All of them seem to follow the same structure, so essentially what I'd like to do is:
Look for patterns that I want to keep and do something with them. Some examples:
a. transform <TITLE>A title</TITLE> to \chapter{A Title}
b. tranform <I>Italic text</I> to \em{Italic text}
c. transform <P>Some text</P> to Some text[newline]
In reality the <P> tags will be a bit more complex than this, since the HTML seems to be generated and there's a lot of <P>..</P> tags whose contents are of no interest to me since they don't contain any text.
I started working at this using string scanning but didn't get really far, owing to the fact that my experience so far with it was on rather short strings. But in this case I think I need to do things in a big loop.
$define collect tab dir := "/home/northbae/Documents/magus/www.sacred-texts.com/grim/magus/" filename := "ma" number := 0 extension := ".htm" # Process files ma100.htm to ma167.htm every number := 100 to 167 do { file := dir || filename || number || extension # Open the current filename currentFile := open(file, "r") | die("Could not open file.") # Read the entire file as a string text := reads(currentFile, 500000) # Scan and extract items of interest # This here is where I'm stuck. See comment below at rest := tab(0) text ? { tab(find("<TITLE>")) move(7) title := collect(upto("</TITLE>")) write("\\chapter{",title, "}") tab(find("<HR>\n</P>")) move(9) # I think this needs to be text := tab(0) and have this entire thing be a loop, like # loop # Scan # extract # make new subject be the rest of the string # end loop rest := tab(0) } }But after reading a bit about SNOBOL style Pattern matching, ithis might be an easier way to go about it, if I want to look for patterns and replace them with another one, or rearrange peices of text in certain ways.
But I'm still unsure how you go about this in a loop, as the patterns I'm looking for could be found more than once in the document. What I want to do is scan for a pattern, do something, then reset the subject to be the rest of the subject, then loop back to be able to check for those patterns again and again.
For some context, here are examples of the htm files I intend to scan: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/68mv6j8evgmv1ok/AACHRY9xUnReX45vM-IZRoQNa?dl=0
I think just understanding how to set up a loop that scans for patterns then resets the subject to be current pos..tab(0), this should be helpful enough to allow be to keep at it.
Regards, and thanks for any pointers.
yves