正则表达式提取字符串

Question

I need to extract a string from a big string. Is it possible to use regular expression to extract the string:

4567       Test Assembling the Plant(4566)   [2]         WAST         Testing1<CR><LF>
ERTW         Test the second assembly           [3]        JEST         Test4<CR><LF>
V345           This is another test (FAR X) [9]      KERT         Test192<CR><LF>
--         This is test Number 10       [6] <CR><lf>
                                                              Test100<CR><LF>
           Number of the testing assembly  (1234)                     Test the plant assembly <CR><LF>  

V234              Testing the WIRE ASSEMBLY                               Test this assembly (12345-7876544)  [9]  <CR><LF>
C34567        This is another test assembly   (123456) [6]        trew43     This is test assembly<CR><LF>
RT234      Testing the assembly1100                            PQR         Testing assembly<CR><LF>
PL234         Test                                               RET<CR><LF>

Can I use regular expression to extract the above data and insert them in database

Table1

Col1       Col2                                            COL3             Col4

4567       Test Assembling the Plant(4566)  [2]            WAST              Testing1
ERTW       Test the second assembly           [3]          JEST              Test4
V345       This is another test (FAR X) [9]                KERT              Test192
--         This is test Number 10       [6]
       Number of the testing assembly  (1234)                            Test the plant assembly 
V234       Testing the WIRE ASSEMBLY                                         Test this assembly   (12345-7876544)  [9]
C34567     This is another test assembly   (123456) [6]    trew43            This is test assembly 
RT234      Testing the assembly1100                        PQR               Testing assembly
PL234      Test                                            RET

Is it possible to extract the above using Regular expression or based on column numbers.

any help will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Sounds like the problem is the multiple spaces in each data field. They look like they are either single spaces between words or multiple spaces before an opening ( or [. So I convert those to single space and then break the fields apart based on three or more spaces. I then use a field separator of " || " for clarity

cat file1 file2 | perl -pe 's/\s+\(/ \(/g;s/\s+\[/ \[/g' | perl -pe 's/\s{3,}/ \|\| /g' | perl -pe 's/<CR>.*//'

Each line of output would look like this. The ordering is just based on the cat.

• 567 || Test Assembling the Plant(4566) [2] || WAST || Testing1
• ERTW || Test the second assembly [3] || JEST || Test4
• V345 || This is another test (FAR X) [9] || KERT || Test192
• -- || This is test Number 10 [6]
• || Test100
• || Number of the testing assembly (1234) || Test the plant assembly
• V234 || Testing the WIRE ASSEMBLY || Test this assembly (12345-7876544) [9]
• C34567 || This is another test assembly (123456) [6] || trew43 || This is test assembly -RT234 || Testing the assembly1100 || PQR || Testing assembly -PL234 || Test || RET

Answer 2

Yes you can use Regex to extract strings from big data. No problem for spaces with regex.

\\s -> any space character