batch file to alter txt files through multiple find and replace

[Josef Miller]

I'm working on analysing data in txt format.
Data are in about 22000 files, in one main directory under many sub and sub sub-directories.
Each file has a different number of data records.
Each data record starts with the word "Type" and consists of a number of segments separated by "%" (percent character).

In order to run data analysis, I need to change the format of every data file so that:
1. first find and replace % with regex \r\n (a newline or carriage return), so that the segments will be in successive order, and
2. then find and replace the word Type with a new line above it, i.e. with \r\nType, so that each record is separated with one empty line from the record above.

I usually do this manually for a handful number of files, but when it comes to thousands of them I become in need for an expert hand to help. So can I get some precious assistance with this request, please?

Many thanks in advance.

J.

 

[mxnerd]

Asking others to hold your hands is not the proper way to get your job done.

You need to learn how to program / write scripts yourself.

Powershell / VBscript is built-in in Windows.

AutoIt is also a very good tool.
https://www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit/

Or Python
https://www.python.org/

You can find many tutorials on Youtube.

 

[veri745]

People are a lot more likely to help if you ask a specific question, or post a code clip where you're having a particular issue you need help with.

Asking for people to do something for you may not get much response.

 

[Josef Miller]

@mxnerd & veri745, thank you for your comments. There are times when we tend to go to restaurants despite we can cook, simply because we're tired or don't have time to spend on cooking. We should all be more cooperative and more understanding. When someone asks for help, it doesn't mean at all that that person is lazy or ignorant or need some literature to read and learn. It simply means that such person needs help. And believe me, there are a lot of people who tend to help just for help, simply because they love doing the good.

I found this powerful "find and replace utility" at this link: http://findandreplace.io/ through which I fulfilled my need. I hope it would be of some benefit to someone "in need".

At this point I close this thread, and it can be marked as "resolved".

J.

 

[mxnerd]

Not that I don't want to help, it's that I haven't program for a while.

I assume it's your daily job to process text files since you posted 2 similar threads in a row,

that's why I suggested you to learn some programming, since that maybe what you need down the road.

Since you already found your solution, congratulate that!

 

[mv2devnull]

I have 'bash', 'find' and 'sed' at my disposal and thus consider the task "easy".
The twist, of course is that those GNU tools, while being available for Windows too, are not "batch".

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I have 'bash', 'find' and 'sed' at my disposal and thus consider the task "easy".
The twist, of course is that those GNU tools, while being available for Windows too, are not "batch".

http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/sed.htm

Writing batch files is easy.

 

[sourceninja]

I have 'bash', 'find' and 'sed' at my disposal and thus consider the task "easy".
The twist, of course is that those GNU tools, while being available for Windows too, are not "batch".

Simple answer is to just use powershell for windows scripts.

Longer answer is to either install gnu tools, or enable the linux subsystem on windows and use the same scripts.

 

[mv2devnull]

Thus we can summarize that "batch", "powershell", and "sh/ksh/csh/tcsh/bash" scripts are all "easy", but one has to learn at least one of them first.

 

[you2]

I failed to grasp the programming question being asked.

 

[purbeast0]

This can very easily be done using any programming language. If I were to do this I'd write it in Java. Open a file stream, do a find and replace on each line, then output the results. You can easily get all of the files in a specific directory and traverse the folders then process them.