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Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:09:09 +0800
From: W B Hacker <wbh@conducive.org>
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To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
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Subject: Re: [9fans] sed question (OT)
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Steve Simon wrote:
> Sorry, not really the place for such questions but...
>
> I always struggle with sed, awk is easy but sed makes my head hurt.
>
> I am trying to capitalise the first tow words on each line (I could use awk
> as well but I have to use sed so it seems churlish to start another process).
>
> capitalising the first word on the line is easy enough:
>
> 			h
> 			s/^(.).*/\1/
> 			y/abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz/ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ/
> 			x
> 			s/^.(.*)/\1/
> 			x
> 			G
> 			s/\n//
>
> Though there maye be a much easier/more elegant way to do this,
> but for the 2nd word it gets much harder.
>
> What I really want is sam's ability to select a letter and operate on it
> rather than everything being line based as sed seems to be.
>
> any neat solutions? (extra points awarded for use of the branch operator :-)
>
> -Steve
>
>

I'd be sore tempted to move the needful files into an environment where I could
use multiple passes of 'rpl' (or 'back in the day' BRIEF).

BFBI .. far less capable tools, perhaps - BUT by the time you've figured out how
to even *tell* awk or sed what to do, I'm working on some other task...

'If at first you don't succeed - cheat'

YMMV,

Bill