NAME

Text::Parser - Simplifies text parsing. Easily extensible to parse any text format.

VERSION

version 0.915

SYNOPSIS

    use Text::Parser;

    my $parser = Text::Parser->new();
    $parser->read(shift);
    print $parser->get_records, "\n";

The above code reads the first command-line argument as a string, and assuming it is the name of a text file, it will print the content of the file to STDOUT. If the string is not the name of a text file it will throw an exception and exit.

    package MyParser;

    use parent 'Text::Parser';
    ## or use Moose; extends 'Text::Parser';

    sub save_record {
        my $self = shift;
        ## ...
    }

    package main;

    my $parser = MyParser->new(auto_split => 1, auto_chomp => 1, auto_trim => 'b');
    $parser->read(shift);
    foreach my $rec ($parser->get_records) {
        ## ...
    }

The above example shows how Text::Parser could be easily extended to parse a specific text format.

RATIONALE

Text parsing is perhaps the single most common thing that almost every Perl program does. Yet we don't have a lean, flexible, text parsing utility. Ideally, the developer should only have to specify the "grammar" of the text file she intends to parse. Everything else, like opening a file handle, closeing the file handle, tracking line-count, joining continued lines into one, reporting any errors in line continuation, trimming white space, splitting each line into fields, etc., should be automatic.

Unfortunately however, most file parsing code looks like this:

    open FH, "<$fname";
    my $line_count = 0;
    while (<FH>) {
        $line_count++;
        chomp;
        $_ = trim $_;  ## From String::Util
        my (@fields) = split /\s+/;
        # do something for each line ...
    }
    close FH;

Note that a developer may have to repeat all of the above if she has to read another file with different content or format. And if the text has line-continuation characters, it isn't easy to implement it well with the while loop above.

With Text::Parser, developers can focus on specifying the grammar and simply use the read method. Just inherit the class and override one method (save_record). Voila! you have a parser. These examples illustrate how easy this can be.

DESCRIPTION

Text::Parser is a format-agnostic text parsing utility class. Derived classes can specify the format-specific syntax they intend to parse. Usually just methods needs to be overridden to do this. But of course derived classes can create any additional attributes or methods needed to interpret the fomart and extract records.

Future versions are expected to include progress-bar support, parsing text from sockets, UTF support, or parsing from a chunk of memory. All these software features are text-format independent and should be re-used. Derived classes of Text::Parser will be able to take advantage of these features seamlessly, while the base class handles the "mundane" details.

CONSTRUCTOR

new

Takes optional attributes in the form of a hash. See section ATTRIBUTES for a list of the attributes and their description. Throws an exception if you use wrong inputs to create an object.

    my $parser = Text::Parser->new(
        auto_chomp      => 0,           # 0 (Default) or 1
                                        #   - automatically chomp lines
        multiline_type  => 'join_last', # 'join_last'|'join_next'|undef ; Default: undef
        auto_trim       => 'b',         # 'l' (left), 'r' (right), 'b' (both), 'n' (neither) (Default)
                                        #   - automatically trim leading and trailing whitespaces
        auto_split      => 1,           # Auto-splits lines into fields
        FS => qr/\s+/,     # Used by auto_split feature above. Default: qr/\s+/
    );

This $parser variable will be used in all examples below.

ATTRIBUTES

The attributes below can be used as options to the new constructor. Each attribute has an accessor with the same name.

auto_chomp

Read-write attribute. Takes a boolean value as parameter. Defaults to 0.

    print "Parser will chomp lines automatically\n" if $parser->auto_chomp;

auto_split

Read-only attribute that can be set only during object construction. Defaults to 0. This attribute indicates if the parser will automatically split every line into fields. If it is set to a true value, each line will be split into fields which can be accessed through special methods that become available. These methods are documented in Text::Parser::AutoSplit. The field separator can be set using another attribute named 'FS'.

auto_trim

Read-write attribute. The values this can take are shown under the new constructor also. Defaults to 'n' (neither side spaces will be trimmed).

    $parser->auto_trim('l');       # 'l' (left), 'r' (right), 'b' (both), 'n' (neither) (Default)

FS

Read-write attribute that can be used to specify the field separator along with auto_split attribute. It must be a regular expression reference enclosed in the qr function, like qr/\s+|[,]/ which will split across either spaces or commas. The default value for this argument is qr/\s+/.

The name for this attribute comes from the built-in FS variable in the popular GNU Awk program.

    $parser->FS( qr/\s+\(*|\s*\)/ );

You can change the field separator in the course of parsing a file. But the changes would take effect only on the next line. For example:

    package MyParser;

    use Moose;
    extends 'Text::Parser';

    sub BUILDARGS {
        return {
            auto_split => 1,
            auto_chomp => 1,
            auto_trim => 'b'
        };
    }

    sub save_record {
        my $self = shift;
        $self->FS(qr/[,]/) if $self->field(0) eq 'CSV_BELOW';
        $self->SUPER::save_record([$self->fields]);
    }

    package main;

    use Data::Dumper 'Dumper';

    my $parser = MyParser->new();
    $parser->read('input.txt');
    print Dumper([$parser->get_records]), "\n";

Now, let us say you have a file input.txt with the following content:

    Some information in this file
    CSV_BELOW
    col1,col2,col3
    data1,1,1
    data2,2,4
    data3,3,9

Then the output will be:

    $VAR1 = [
        [ 'Some', 'information', 'in', 'this', 'file' ],
        [ 'CSV_BELOW' ], 
        [ 'col1', 'col2', 'col3' ], 
        [ 'data1', '1', '1' ], 
        [ 'data2', '2', '4' ], 
        [ 'data3', '3', '9' ]
    ];

multiline_type

Read-write attribute. Takes a value that is either undef or one of strings 'join_next' or 'join_last'.

    my $mult = $parser->multiline_type;
    print "Parser is a multi-line parser of type: $mult" if defined $mult;

    $parser->multiline_type(undef);
                        # setting this to undef will throw an exception if it was previously set to a real value like
                        # 'join_next' or 'join_last'. In this case, since $parser was of 'join_last' type, there will
                        # be an exception
    $parser->multiline_type('join_next');
                        # Changes the parser to a multiline parser of type 'join_next'
                        # This is okay.

What value should I choose?

If your text format allows users to break up what should be on a single line into another line using a continuation character, you need to use the multiline_type option. The option tells the parser to join lines back into a single line, so that your save_record method doesn't have to bother about joining the continued lines, stripping any continuation characters, line-feeds etc. There are two variations in this:

If your format allows something like a trailing back-slash or some other character to indicate that text on next line is to be joined with this one, then choose join_next. See this example.
If your format allows some character to indicate that text on the current line is part of the last line, then choose join_last. See this simple SPICE line-joiner as an example. Note: If you have no continuation character, but you want to just join all the lines into one single line and then call save_record only once for the whole text block, then use join_last. See this trivial line-joiner.

Remember that join_next multi-line parsers will blindly look for input to be continued on the next line, even if EOF has been reached. This means, if you want to "slurp" a file into a single large string, without any continuation characters, you must use the join_last multi-line type.

METHODS

read

Takes zero or one argument which could be a string containing the name of the file, or a filehandle reference (a GLOB) like \*STDIN or an object of the FileHandle class. Throws an exception if filename/GLOB provided is either non-existent or cannot be read for any reason.

Note: Normally if you provide the GLOB of a file opened for write, some Operating Systems allow reading from it too, and some don't. Read the documentation for filehandle for more on this.

    $parser->read($filename);

    # The above is equivalent to the following
    $parser->filename($filename);
    $parser->read();

    # You can also read from a previously opened file handle directly
    $parser->filehandle(\*STDIN);
    $parser->read();

Returns once all records have been read or if an exception is thrown for any parsing errors, or if reading has been aborted with the abort_reading method.

If you provide a filename as input, the function will handle all open and close operations on files even if any exception is thrown, or if the reading has been aborted. But if you pass a file handle GLOB or FileHandle object instead, then the file handle won't be closed and it will be the responsibility of the calling program to close the filehandle.

    $parser->read('myfile.txt');
    # Will handle open, parsing, and closing of file automatically.

    open MYFH, "<myfile.txt" or die "Can't open file myfile.txt at ";
    $parser->read(\*MYFH);
    # Will not close MYFH and it is the respo
    close MYFH;

When you do read a new file name or file handle with this method, you will lose all the records stored from the previous read operation. So this means that if you want to read a different file with the same parser object, (unless you don't care about the records from the last file you read) you should use the get_records method to retrieve all the read records before parsing a new file. So all those calls to read in the example above were parsing three different files, and each successive call overwrote the records from the previous call.

    $parser->read($file1);
    my (@records) = $parser->get_records();

    $parser->read(\*STDIN);
    my (@stdin) = $parser->get_records();

Note: To extend the class to other file formats, override save_record instead of this one.

Future Enhancement

At present the read method takes only two possible inputs argument types, either a file name, or a file handle. In future this may be enhanced to read from sockets, subroutines, or even just a block of memory (a string reference). Suggestions for other forms of input are welcome.

filename

Takes zero or one string argument containing the name of a file. Returns the name of the file that was last opened if any. Returns undef if no file has been opened.

    print "Last read ", $parser->filename, "\n";

The file name is "persistent" in the object. Meaning, even after you have called read once, it still remembers the file name. So you can do this:

    $parser->read(shift @ARGV);
    print $parser->filename(), ":\n",
          "=" x (length($parser->filename())+1),
          "\n",
          $parser->get_records(),
          "\n";

But if you do a read with a filehandle as argument, you'll see that the last filename is lost - which makes sense.

    $parser->read(\*MYFH);
    print "Last file name is lost\n" if not defined $parser->filename();

filehandle

Takes zero or one argument that must be either a filehandle GLOB (such as \*STDIN) or an object of the FileHandle class. The method saves it for future a read call. Returns the filehandle last saved, or undef if none was saved. Remember that after a successful read call, filehandles are lost.

    my $fh = $parser->filehandle();

Like in the case of filename method, if after you read with a filehandle, you call read again, this time with a file name, the last filehandle is lost.

    my $lastfh = $parser->filehandle();
    ## Will return STDOUT
    
    $parser->read('another.txt');
    print "No filehandle saved any more\n" if
                        not defined $parser->filehandle();

lines_parsed

Takes no arguments. Returns the number of lines last parsed. A line is reckoned when the \n character is encountered.

    print $parser->lines_parsed, " lines were parsed\n";

The value is auto-updated during the execution of read. See this example of how this can be used in derived classes.

Again the information in this is "persistent". But you can also be assured that every time you call read, the value be auto-reset before parsing.

get_records

Takes no arguments. Returns an array containing all the records saved by the parser.

    foreach my $record ( $parser->get_records ) {
        $i++;
        print "Record: $i: ", $record, "\n";
    }

has_aborted

Takes no arguments, returns a boolean to indicate if text reading was aborted in the middle.

    print "Aborted\n" if $parser->has_aborted();

pop_record

Takes no arguments and pops the last saved record.

    my $last_rec = $parser->pop_record;
    $uc_last = uc $last_rec;
    $parser->save_record($uc_last);

last_record

Takes no arguments and returns the last saved record. Leaves the saved records untouched.

    my $last_rec = $parser->last_record;

OVERRIDE IN SUBCLASS

save_record

Takes exactly one argument and that is saved as a record. Additional arguments are ignored. If no arguments are passed, then undef is stored as a record.

In an application that uses a text parser, you will most-likely never call this method directly. It is automatically called within read for each line. In this base class Text::Parser, save_record is simply called with a string containing the raw line of text ; i.e. the line of text will not be chomped or modified in any way (unless of course the auto_chomp attribute is turned on). Here is a basic example.

Derived classes can decide to store records in a different form. A derived class could, for example, store the records in the form of hash references (so that when you use get_records, you'd get an array of hashes), or maybe even another array reference (so when you use get_records you'd get an array of arrays). The CSV parser example does the latter.

line_auto_manip

A method that could be overridden to manipulate each line before it gets to save_record method. Because this is called before the save_record method, it is called even before the Text::Parser::Multiline role can be called. You will almost never call this method in a program directly but might use it in subclasses.

The default implementation chomps lines (if auto_chomp is true) and trims leading/trailing whitespace (if auto_trim is not 'n').

If you override this method, remember that it takes a string as input and returns a string.

is_line_continued

This method is to be defined by the derived class and is used only for multi-line parsers. Look under FOR MULTI-LINE TEXT PARSING for details.

DON'T OVERRIDE IN SUBCLASS

push_records

Don't override this method unless you know what you're doing. This method is useful if you have to copy the records from another parser. It is a general-purpose method for storing records that have been prepared before-hand. It is not supposed to be used to modify the arguments and make records (like save_record does).

    $parser->push_records(
        $another_parser->get_records
    );

FOR USE IN SUBCLASS

abort_reading

Takes no arguments. Returns 1. You will probably never call this method in your main program.

This method is usually used only in the derived class. See this example.

FOR MULTI-LINE TEXT PARSING

is_line_continued

Takes a string argument and returns a boolean indicating of the line is continued or not. If the user defines a new text format with multi-line support, they should implement this method. An example implementation would look like this:

    sub is_line_continued {
        my ($self, $line) = @_;
        chomp $line;
        $line =~ /\\\s*$/;
    }

The above example method checks if a line is being continued by using a back-slash character (\).

The default method provided in this class will return 0 if the parser is not a multi-line parser. If it is a multi-line parser, return value depends on the type of multiline parser. If it is of type 'join_last', then it returns 1 for all lines except the first line. This means all lines continue from the previous line (except the first line, because there is no line before that). But if it is of type 'join_next', then it returns 1 for all lines unconditionally. Note: This means the parser will expect further lines, even when the last line in the text input has been read. Thus you need to have a way to indicate that there is no further continuation. This is why if you are building a trivial line-joiner, you should use the 'join_last' type. See this example

Most users would never need to use this method in their own programs, but if one is writing a parser for a specific format that supports multi-line extension, mostly they'd have to implement it.

join_last_line

This method can be overridden in multi-line text parsing. The method takes two string arguments and joins them in a way that removes the continuation character. The default implementation just concatenates two strings and returns the result without removing anything. You should redefine this method to strip any continuation characters and join the strings with any required spaces. Below is an example of a method which strips the ending back-slash continuation characters, that were detected in the is_line_continued method above.

    sub join_last_line {
        my $self = shift;
        my ($last, $line) = (shift, shift);
        $last =~ s/\\\s*$//g;
        return "$last $line";
    }

DEPRECATED

setting

This method has been deprecated. Use multiline_type and auto_chomp instead.

(Note: This deprecated method cannot be used with the auto_trim attribute)

This method will disappear from version 1.0 onwards.

EXAMPLES

Basic principle

Derived classes simply need to override one method : save_record. With the help of that any arbitrary file format can be read. save_record should interpret the format of the text and store it in some form by calling SUPER::save_record. The main:: program will then use the records and create an appropriate data structure with it.

Notice that the creation of a data structure is not the objective of a parser. It is simply concerned with collecting data and arranging it in a form that can be used. That's all. Data structures can be created by a different part of your program using the data collected by your parser.

Note: There is support for Moose. So you could use extends 'Text::Parser' instead of the use parent pragma in these examples. The examples in this documentation will show non-Moose classic Perl OO derived classes for ease of understanding. Those who know how to use class automators like Moo/Moose should be able to follow.

Example 1 : A simple CSV Parser

We will write a parser for a simple CSV file that reads each line and stores the records as array references. This example is oversimplified, and does not handle embedded newlines.

    package Text::Parser::CSV;
    use parent 'Text::Parser';
    use Text::CSV;

    my $csv;
    sub save_record {
        my ($self, $line) = @_;
        $csv //= Text::CSV->new({ binary => 1, auto_diag => 1});
        $csv->parse($line);
        $self->SUPER::save_record([$csv->fields]);
    }

That's it! Now in main:: you can write something like this:

    use Text::Parser::CSV;
    
    my $csvp = Text::Parser::CSV->new();
    $csvp->read(shift @ARGV);
    foreach my $aref ($csvp->get_records) {
        my (@arr) = @{$aref};
        print "@arr\n";
    }

The above program reads the content of a given CSV file and prints the content out in space-separated form.

Example 2 : Error checking

This class encourages the use of exceptions for error checking. Read the documentation for Exceptions to learn about creating, throwing, and catching exceptions in Perl. This class uses exceptions based on Throwable::SugarFactory, but you could use any of the other classes listed in Exceptions. We recommend useing Keyword::Syntax::Try to catch exceptions, but you may use the other alternatives described in Exceptions.

Detecting syntax errors

You can throw exceptions from save_record when you detect a syntax error. This class will close all filehandles automatically as soon as an exception is thrown from save_record. The exception will pass through to ::main unless you intercept it in your derived class. To allow all exceptions to pass through, we use the Syntax::Keyword::Try which implements the try-catch as I would expect it. An earlier implementation of this class used Try::Tiny and exceptions would not properly pass through.

Here is an example showing the use of an exception to detect a syntax error in a file:

    package My::Text::Parser;
    use Exception::Class (
        'My::Text::Parser::SyntaxError' => {
            description => 'syntax error',
            alias => 'throw_syntax_error', 
        },
    );
    
    use parent 'Text::Parser';

    sub save_record {
        my ($self, $line) = @_;
        throw_syntax_error(error => 'syntax error') if _syntax_error($line);
        $self->SUPER::save_record($line);
    }

Exceptions thrown by `Text::Parser`

Text::Parser throws a number of different types of exceptions that are described in Text::Parser::Errors. The base class for all these exceptions is Text::Parser::Errors::GenericError.

You can optionally build a handler using Dispatch::Class, to handle exceptions of various types.

Example 3 : Aborting without errors

We can also abort parsing a text file without throwing an exception. This could be if we got the information we needed. For example:

    package SomeParser;
    use Moose;
    extends 'Text::Parser';

    sub BUILDARGS {
        my $pkg = shift;
        return {auto_split => 1};
    }

    sub save_record {
        my ($self, $line) = @_;
        return $self->abort_reading() if $self->field(0) eq '**ABORT';
        return $self->SUPER::save_record($line);
    }

Above is shown a parser SomeParser that would save each line as a record, but would abort reading the rest of the file as soon as it reaches a line with **ABORT as the first word. When this parser is given the following file as input:

    somefile.txt:

    Some text is here.
    More text here.
    **ABORT reading
    This text is not read
    This text is not read
    This text is not read
    This text is not read

You can now write a program as follows:

    use SomeParser;

    my $par = SomeParser->new();
    $par->read('somefile.txt');
    print $par->get_records(), "\n";

The output will be:

    Some text is here.
    More text here.

Example 4 : Multi-line parsing

Some text formats allow users to split a line into several lines with a line continuation character (usually at the end or the beginning of a line).

Trivial line-joiner

Below is a trivial example where all lines are joined into one:

    use strict;
    use warnings;
    use Text::Parser;

    my $join_all = Text::Parser->new(auto_chomp => 1, multiline_type => 'join_last');
    $join_all->read('input.txt');
    print $join_all->get_records(), "\n";

Another trivial example is here.

Continue with character

(Pun intended! ;-))

In the above example, all lines are joined (indiscriminately). But most often text formats have a continuation character that specifies that the line continues to the next line, or that the line is a continuation of the previous line. Here's an example parser that treats the back-slash (\) character as a line-continuation character:

    package MyMultilineParser;
    use parent 'Text::Parser';
    use strict;
    use warnings;

    sub new {
        my $pkg = shift;
        $pkg->SUPER::new(multiline_type => 'join_next');
    }

    sub is_line_continued {
        my $self = shift;
        my $line = shift;
        chomp $line;
        return $line =~ /\\\s*$/;
    }

    sub join_last_line {
        my $self = shift;
        my ($last, $line) = (shift, shift);
        chomp $last;
        $last =~ s/\\\s*$/ /g;
        return $last . $line;
    }

    1;

In your main::

    use MyMultilineParser;
    use strict;
    use warnings;

    my $parser = MyMultilineParser->new();
    $parser->read('multiline.txt');
    print "Read:\n"
    print $parser->get_records(), "\n";

Try with the following input multiline.txt:

    Garbage In.\
    Garbage Out!

When you run the above code with this file, you should get:

    Read:
    Garbage In. Garbage Out!

Simple SPICE line joiner

Some text formats allow a line to indicate that it is continuing from a previous line. For example SPICE has a continuation character (+) on the next line, indicating that the text on that line should be joined with the previous line. Let's show how to build a simple SPICE line-joiner. To build a full-fledged parser you will have to specify the rich and complex grammar for SPICE circuit description.

    use TrivialSpiceJoin;
    use parent 'Text::Parser';

    use constant {
        SPICE_LINE_CONTD => qr/^[+]\s*/,
        SPICE_END_FILE   => qr/^\.end/i,
    };

    sub new {
        my $pkg = shift;
        $pkg->SUPER::new(auto_chomp => 1, multiline_type => 'join_last');
    }

    sub is_line_continued {
        my ( $self, $line ) = @_;
        return 0 if not defined $line;
        return $line =~ SPICE_LINE_CONTD;
    }
    
    sub join_last_line {
        my ( $self, $last, $line ) = ( shift, shift, shift );
        return $last if not defined $line;
        $line =~ s/^[+]\s*/ /;
        return $line if not defined $last;
        return $last . $line;
    }

    sub save_record {
        my ( $self, $line ) = @_;
        return $self->abort_reading() if $line =~ SPICE_END_FILE;
        $self->SUPER::save_record($line);
    }

Try this parser with a SPICE deck with continuation characters and see what you get. Try having errors in the file. You may now write a more elaborate method for save_record above and that could be used to parse a full SPICE file.

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests on the bugtracker website http://github.com/balajirama/Text-Parser/issues

When submitting a bug or request, please include a test-file or a patch to an existing test-file that illustrates the bug or desired feature.

AUTHOR

Balaji Ramasubramanian <balajiram@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

CONTRIBUTOR

H.Merijn Brand - Tux <h.m.brand@xs4all.nl>

To install Text::Parser, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.

cpanm

cpanm Text::Parser

CPAN shell

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Text::Parser

For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.

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NAME

VERSION

SYNOPSIS

RATIONALE

DESCRIPTION

CONSTRUCTOR

new

ATTRIBUTES

auto_chomp

auto_split

auto_trim

FS

multiline_type

What value should I choose?

METHODS

read

Future Enhancement

filename

filehandle

lines_parsed

get_records

has_aborted

pop_record

last_record

OVERRIDE IN SUBCLASS

save_record

line_auto_manip

is_line_continued

DON'T OVERRIDE IN SUBCLASS

push_records

FOR USE IN SUBCLASS

abort_reading

FOR MULTI-LINE TEXT PARSING

is_line_continued

join_last_line

DEPRECATED

setting

EXAMPLES

Basic principle

Example 1 : A simple CSV Parser

Example 2 : Error checking

Detecting syntax errors

Exceptions thrown by Text::Parser

Example 3 : Aborting without errors

Example 4 : Multi-line parsing

Trivial line-joiner

Continue with character

Simple SPICE line joiner

SEE ALSO

BUGS

AUTHOR

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

CONTRIBUTOR

Module Install Instructions

Exceptions thrown by `Text::Parser`