Perl text parse help (noob)

[dfp]

Hi,

Just beginning perl and wanting to a perl script to do 2 things:

First Pull a text file off a web site such as URL.com/sample.txt

Then Text Parse the txt file to get figures for each line.

The text file looks like this:
username=DP
data_down=8579.81 MB
data_up=3894.36 MB
free_data_down=22177.53 MB
free_data_up=8311.49 MB

I wanted to be able to return just the number for the query on each line. So If I ran the script "script.pl data_down" I would get just the figure 8579.81 printed.

If possible can someone recommend or help me with some samples to achieve this with perl?

[fahlyn]

That's pretty simple, but first of all I've got a few questions. Is the location of the text file on the same or a different server than your script? if it is on the same server you should just be able to "open" it...otherwise you'll need to use LWP::Simple and use "get".

Assuming that the file is on the same server you should be able to do something like this...(this is a CGI app...so instead of using CGI you'll just be able to use $ARGV[0] (that will contain the first argument passed to the script)

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict; use warnings;
use CGI;
my $cgi = CGI->new;

open(FILE, "data.txt") || die("Could not open file!");
my @contents=<FILE>;
close(FILE);

my $argv = $cgi->param('argv');

print "Content-type:text/plain\n\n";
foreach my $content (@contents){
    if($content =~ m/^$argv=(.+)\sMB/){
        print "$1\n";
   }
}

That should do what you need.

[KevinADC]

He's not running a CGI script. He was also advised on another forum where to look to start coding such a script. LWP::Simple to fetch the page then parse it using the split() function.

[fahlyn]

you'll need to use LWP::Simple and use "get". ...so instead of using CGI you'll just be able to use $ARGV[0]

I realize dfp is not writing a CGI script...that is why i made the comment above....I also mentioned LWP::Simple...however I think that using a regex is quite a bit easier than the split function...if you're using the split function and splitting by an "=" then you'll still need to get rid of the " MB" at the end of each record (see dfp's example)

[KevinADC]

I realize dfp is not writing a CGI script...that is why i made the comment above....I also mentioned LWP::Simple...however I think that using a regex is quite a bit easier than the split function...if you're using the split function and splitting by an "=" then you'll still need to get rid of the " MB" at the end of each record (see dfp's example)

My bad. I didn't read all of your comments. Sorry.