Re: a function for string splitting

["Luis O. Silva" <silva@paloma.spbu.ru>]

Dear Lee,

On 26 Nov 2002 15:49:00 +0100, Lee Sau Dan writes:

   Luis> My question is what function I could use for
   Luis> correctly splitting the string.

   Luis> Please be indulgent with me since

   Luis> 1. I'm not a programmer 2. I don't have access to the
   Luis> elisp manual even on-line (my connection is very
   Luis> slow, only sufficient to download my e-mail).

   Lee> Consider learning "regular expressions", which are not
   Lee> only useful in Emacs, but also useful throughout the
   Lee> unix environment (e.g. grep, sed, awk, vi, ...).

   Lee> Try:

   Lee> (let ((date-string "Thu, 21 Nov 2002 16:05:50 -0600")
   Lee>       (regex-fragment-1 "\\([A-Z][a-z]*\\), ")
   Lee>       (regex-fragment-2 "\\([0-9]+\\)\\([A-Z][a-z]*\\)\\([0-9]+\\) ")
   Lee>       (regex-fragment-3 "\\([0-9]+\\):\\([0-9]+\\):\\([0-9]+\\) ")
   Lee>       (regex-fragment-4 "\\([+-][0-9]*\\)" ))
   Lee>   (if (string-match (concat regex-fragment-1
   Lee>                             regex-fragment-2
   Lee>                             regex-fragment-3
   Lee>                             regex-fragment-4)
   Lee>                     date-string)
   Lee>     (let ((day-of-week (match-string 1 date-string))
   Lee>           (day (match-string 2 date-string))
   Lee>           (month-name (match-string 3 date-string))
   Lee>           (year (match-string 4 date-string))
   Lee>           (hour (match-string 5 date-string))
   Lee>           (minute (match-string 6 date-string))
   Lee>           (second (match-string 7 date-string))
   Lee>           (tz-spec (match-string 8 date-string)))

   Lee>     (list day month-name year hour minute second tz-spec))))

Thank you very much. This is just what I needed. I have an
incipient notion of regular expressions and I had used them to
do search in buffers. I didn't know of the existence of the
function `string-match'.

   Lee> Note that I've broken up the regex into 4 fragments to
   Lee> make it usenet friendly, rejoining them with (concat
   Lee> ...).  This is not really necessary.

Yes, it is not necessary but this nicety will also be useful
for me. Thanks a lot.

Regards,
luis

-- 
Luis Octavio Silva P.
St. Petersburg State University.
66/3 Botanicheskaya St., Apt.119/2
Stary Peterhof
St. Petersburg, Russia.