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Hi all, |
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|
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I am trying to do something relatively simple and I've had something |
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working in the past, but my brain just doesn't want to work today. |
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|
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I have a text file with the following (this is just a subset of about |
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2500 dates, and I don't want to edit these all by hand if I can avoid it): |
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|
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--- START --- |
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December 2, 1994 |
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March 27, 1992 |
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June 4, 1994 |
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1993 |
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January 11, 1992 |
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January 3, 1995 |
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|
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|
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March 12, 1993 |
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July 12, 1991 |
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May 17, 1991 |
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August 7, 1992 |
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December 23, 1994 |
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March 27, 1992 |
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March 1995 |
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--- END --- |
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|
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As you can see, there's no standard in the way the date is formatted. |
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Some of them are also formatted YYYY-MM-DD and MM-DD-YYYY. |
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|
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I have a basic grep that I tossed together: |
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|
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grep -o '\([0-9]\{4\}\)' |
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|
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This does extract the year but yields the following: |
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|
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1994 |
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1992 |
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1994 |
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1993 |
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1992 |
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1995 |
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1993 |
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1991 |
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1991 |
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1992 |
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1994 |
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1992 |
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1995 |
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|
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As you can see, the two empty lines are removed but this will cause |
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problems with data not lining up later on. |
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|
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Does anyone have a quick tip for my tired brain to make this work and |
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just output a blank line if there's no match? I swear I did this months |
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ago and had something working but I apparently didn't bother saving the |
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script I made. Argh! |
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|
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Dan |
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