World: r3wp

Right, that makes sense.

I'm finally digging into parse now, but I have a question about HTML. 
  Big idea:  pulling the data out of an HTML table (made in Word--ugh!). 
 Where I am stuck:  Is there a way to create a rule for opening tags 
such as <tr> that include a lot of formatting:  i.e. <tr style="mso........> 
?   I want to pull the info inbetween the opening and closing tags.

Here is some data:

<tr style='mso-yfti-irow:6;mso-row-margin-left:.18%;mso-row-margin-right:20.4%'>

  <td style='mso-cell-special:placeholder;border:none;padding:0in 0in 
  0in 0in'
  width="0%"><p class='MsoNormal'>&nbsp;</td>

  <td width="23%" colspan=2 style='width:23.6%;padding:0in 0in 0in 
  0in'>

  <p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Lucida Sans Unicode"'>&nbsp;MNDLDA09Mar03a_e<o:p></o:p></span></p>
  </td>

with the </tr> at the end

I came up with a rule:  [some [thru "<td" thru ">" y: to "</td>" 
(a: remove-each tag load/markup y [tag? tag])]]  but it seems to 
not be as efficient as it could be.

wouldn't you use "copy y " instead of "y:"?

Josh, if you do a load/markup on the whole string, you get a block 
with tags and strings. You can then pick the string from the block, 
maybe doing TRIM on them to sort out newlines and spaces. Like:

blk: load/markup your-data
foreach f blk [if all [string? f "" <> trim f] [print f]]

If you wanna use PARSE, you can do something like:


parse your-data [some ["<" thru ">" | copy y to "<" (if "" <> trim 
y [print y])]]

I've been toying with this to obtain a very parsable "dialect" -- 
my goal being to scrape live game updates from a certain sports web 
site (for personal use, natch).  It's reliant on 'parse-xml though, 
so ymmv....

do http://www.ross-gill.com/r/scrape.r
probe load-xml some-xml

Result is a little like:

	from -- <tag attr="attribute">Content</tag>
	to -- <tag> /attr attribute "Content"

Josh, using the REMOVE-EACH very often is what makes your parse slow. 
A remove operation in the middle of a large string is slow, and you 
are doing many removes. That's why the others suggested using copy.

Thanks for the input.  I will have to play around with those later 
as I am trying to get this finished up and then I can go back and 
clean up the code. The data is minimal enough for the script to finish 
in under a second anyway.   Parse is pretty sweet.   Makes this much 
neater than the alternative

No worries.

I'm trying to copy some text from the position found iwhile parsing 
a document.
I'm using something like: 


rule: [some digit copy text to newline]    (--where "digit has ben 
defined as all digits 0 to 9)

 This copies eveerything after the digit. How would I copy the digit 
 itself as well?

would it not simply be....    to some digit    instead of what you 
have above?  I'll start playing around and see if I can be of any 
help (if you haven't already figured it out)

Not as easy as it seemed to be.  Will take more time than I have 
right now.

Is there a difference between using "to" and "thru"

yes

is this block parsing?

to goes to the point and thru includes the point

No

So to newline does not include the newline?

no it wouldn't

rule: [ digit copy text to newline skip ]
parse stuff [ some rule ]

digits: [ some digit ]
rule: [ digits ... ]

Graham, the digit String would be included in the copied text with 
this?

nope

because it matches digit and the cursor moves on

past the digit

Right. Anyway to capture the digit?

you can always do something like set n number!

rule: [ copy d thru digits  .... ]

He's using string parsing .. not block parsing

yeah can't use set then.

I'll try that Graham. Thanks

or

non-digits: complement digit
parse [ copy digit-text to non-digits copy text to newline skip ]

and correct syntax helps :)

>> str: "193920347REBOL ROCKS!^/"
== "193920347REBOL ROCKS!^/"

>> parse str  compose [some (charset "0123456789") text: copy text 
thru newline]
== true
>> text
== "REBOL ROCKS!^/"

Something like that?

he was looking for the number and the string though.

No

I have a text document with section numbers in front:

2. Hello
2.1 Hello Again
2.1.1 Hello already
3. Goodbye

I want the section number inclued in hte copy

It need not be included in hte same copy just as long as I can record 
it.

So you just want each line then really?

Well it gets a little more complicated.
some parts of the docment will be multilined.

I thought it would be a simple thing that I was missing. I may need 
to re-think the formatting of the document.

So even if something is multiline you would still want each line 
of the multiline correct?

Or do you mean a multiline might looks something like this:

2.1 Hello
       Goodbye

Where the second line doesn't have the preceeding number?

Yes and formating may need to be retained