Re: Scripting situation I cannot wrap my head around

[Jean-Rene David <jrdavid@xxxxxxxx>]

* TjL [2006.12.05 07:15]:
> [...]
> I am currently writing "verbatims" for a class
> that I am taking.
> [...]
> Here is "normal" dialog:
> 
> John: How are you today?
> Tim: I'm good.
> George: I'm Ok, how are you
> John: I'm good too.
> George: Glad to hear it
> John: Thanks
> Tim: Yeah, me too
> 
> Here is verbatim style dialog:
> 
> John1: How are you today?
> Tim1: I'm good.
> George1: I'm Ok, how are you
> John2: I'm good too.
> George2: Glad to hear it
> John3: Thanks
> Tim2: Yeah, me too
> 
> [...] You would need separate counters for each
> person, and you wouldn't know how many people
> would be a part of the conversation (no fewer
> than 2 people, probably no more than 10, usually
> 2-5).

The 'separate counters for each person' sounds
like a hash to me, and was suggested by others.

However I think a text processing tool would be
more appropriate than a shell for this kind of
task:

% perl -ne 'BEGIN { %person=(); } \
          /^([a-zA-Z]+)(:)(.*)$/ &&  \
            print "$1" . ++$person{$1} . "$2$3\n";' < dialog.file

HTH,

-- 
JR