Re: how to manipulate data like awk or perl when visiting a file

[poppyer <poppyer@gmail.com>]

rustom <rustompmody@gmail.com> writes:

: On Dec 29, 9:14 am, rea...@newsguy.com wrote:
:> I want to get a leg up on how I might manipulate a file like I can
:> with shell tools or awk/perl.
:>
:> Examples:  I want to display only the first field of lines 30 thru 75
:>            I want to reverse field 1 and 5 and print those plus 6 of
:>            each line.
:>            I want to add up the numbers that appears in field 7 of
:>            lines 11 through 28 printing the total to ~/sumtot.txt
:>
:> I'd like to see a few basic examples and maybe I'll be able to get the
:> idea enough to do some of that when I need to.
:>
:> I don't really want to start way at the beginning of elisp to get
:> started.   I hoped maybe there are some examples like that available
:> in existing info documents.
:>
:> I haven't noticed much talk here about those kinds of chores so maybe
:> elisp isn't a good choice for that?
:
: There was a discussion on something like this a few days ago. See
: http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.emacs.help/browse_thread/thread/77dc549480d95f92#

This seems not so relevant.

One way I can think of is to replace TAB to | first
and then use orgtbl-mode, the Org Table editor to do the work.

Is there any way without replace TAB first and manipulate them directly?

Cheers,
poppyer