From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <a5a0ed125653c190d66c7fda845f4487@quanstro.net>
From: erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:04:57 -0400
To: 9fans@9fans.net
In-Reply-To: <a560a5d00909170955q374b811ye0c4714ebc1f3e2f@mail.gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [9fans] awk help; not plan9 matter
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 711cf904-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

> As I said in my second post, neither the field (the problem with sed)
> nor the string to be used as a replacement (no problem) is not known
> in advance...
> Apparently nobody reads but the 1st post... :)

why would it be hard to build up the regular expression
with a script?

something like this (untested, getting lazy)

# usage: buildre n replacement
fn buildre {
	re = '^'
	for(i in `{seq 1 $1})
		re = $re ^ '([^ 	][ 	]*)'
	re = $re ^ ([^ 	]):\' ^ $2 ^ ':'
}

- erik