Wtd: HTML editor to swap the order of columns in tables

[Andy Mabbett]

I have an HTML document which has a long table, with five columns.

I want to swap the order of columns four and five, without breaking
(indeed, without otherwise altering) the valid markup.

Is there a tool which will allow me to do this?

(Cross-posted; comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html used, as I don't
receive comp.infosystems.www.authoring.tools)

--
Andy Mabbett
Say "NO!" to compulsory ID Cards: <http://www.no2id.net/>

Free Our Data: <http://www.freeourdata.org.uk>

[Paul Lutus]

Andy Mabbett wrote:

>
I have an HTML document which has a long table, with five columns.

I want to swap the order of columns four and five, without breaking
(indeed, without otherwise altering) the valid markup.

Is there a tool which will allow me to do this?

Yes. It's called a "Regular Expression Processor", and it is part of most
modern programming languages.

Untested example script (Ruby):

-------------------------------

#!/usr/bin/ruby -w

data = STDIN.read

data.gsub!(%r{(<tr><td>.*?</td><td>.*?</td><td>.*?</td>)(<td>.*?</td>
(<td>.*?</td>)}m,"\\1\\3\\2")

puts data

------------------------------

Use:

scriptname < input.file output.file

Or, you could download my freeware HTML workshop Arachnophilia and write the
above regular expression into its search/replace window. That would be
easier for an end user, while the above Ruby script is easier and more
flexible (will process any number of files by simply naming them) for a
more advanced computer user.

In the long term, it is much more productive to learn how to process HTML
using scripts that contain regular expressions.

Arachnophilia:

http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/index.html

--
Paul Lutus
http://www.arachnoid.com

[Ben Jamieson]

On 2006-08-27 07:05:54 -0400, Andy Mabbett
<us**********@pigsonthewing.org.uksaid:

>
I have an HTML document which has a long table, with five columns.

I want to swap the order of columns four and five, without breaking
(indeed, without otherwise altering) the valid markup.

Is there a tool which will allow me to do this?

(Cross-posted; comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html used, as I don't
receive comp.infosystems.www.authoring.tools)

If you're not comfortable with RegEx/perl/scripting etc (many aren't)
then DreamWeaver will do this with a simple 'Cut/Paste' option.

Might be an easier way to go.

Ben

[AES]

In article <Gd**************@pigsonthewing.org.uk>,
Andy Mabbett <us**********@pigsonthewing.org.ukwrote:

I want to swap the order of columns four and five, without breaking
(indeed, without otherwise altering) the valid markup.

Is there a tool which will allow me to do this?

Excel? (or other low cost spreadsheet)

[Dr John Stockton]

JRS: In article <Gd**************@pigsonthewing.org.uk>, dated Sun, 27
Aug 2006 12:05:54 remote, seen in news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html,
Andy Mabbett <us**********@pigsonthewing.org.ukposted :

>
I have an HTML document which has a long table, with five columns.

I want to swap the order of columns four and five, without breaking
(indeed, without otherwise altering) the valid markup.

Is there a tool which will allow me to do this?

Much depends on whether the layout of the source is consistent. If all
columns of a row are in a single source line, no problem; if they're
split in a consistent manner, no great problem; if the table code is
wrapped like a paragraph of text without regard to its HTML structure,
then why not fix that first? ISTM MiniTrue will do it.

For the first case, start with something like (partly tested) :

mtr -x+ u*.htm "(.*<\/td>)(.*<\/td>)(.*<\/td>)(.*<\/td>)(.*<\/td>)" = \1\2\3\5\4

AFTER reading mtr -h & mtr -? completely.

NOTE that to involve \1 in the reordering a change may be needed; consider

mtr -x+ u*.htm "(<td>.*)(<td>.*)(<td>.*)(<td>.*)(<td>.*)" = \2\3\1\4\5

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v4.00 MIME. ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/- FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
I find MiniTrue useful for viewing/searching/altering files, at a DOS prompt;
free, DOS/Win/UNIX, <URL:http://www.idiotsdelight.net/minitrue/>

[Chris Morris]

Paul Lutus <no****@nosite.zzzwrites:

Andy Mabbett wrote:

I have an HTML document which has a long table, with five columns.

I want to swap the order of columns four and five, without breaking
(indeed, without otherwise altering) the valid markup.

Is there a tool which will allow me to do this?

Yes. It's called a "Regular Expression Processor", and it is part of most
modern programming languages.

....and they're really tricky to get right on non-trivial HTML.

data.gsub!(%r{(<tr><td>.*?</td><td>.*?</td><td>.*?</td>)(<td>.*?</td>
(<td>.*?</td>)}m,"\\1\\3\\2")

Consider trying to extend that regex to cope with possible attributes
on the start tags (which would also need swapping intact). Then
consider an extreme case like this one

<tr id=extreme><td colspan="2">Let's miss out the optional closing tag
on this cell <td title="</tdis a 'closing' tag" class='extra'B
</td><td>C</td></tr>

You can do this sort of swap with a regex *if* you know in advance
that the data is amenable to it. If it's the sort of thing you might
need to do regularly, a tool that understands HTML is really the only
option. Read the document into a DOM (or similar structure) and
manipulate it there.

--
Chris

[blanketyblankman]

AES wrote:

In article <Gd**************@pigsonthewing.org.uk>,
Andy Mabbett <us**********@pigsonthewing.org.ukwrote:

I want to swap the order of columns four and five, without breaking
(indeed, without otherwise altering) the valid markup.

Is there a tool which will allow me to do this?

Excel? (or other low cost spreadsheet)

Google Spreadsheet? =)

[Andy Dingley]

Andy Mabbett wrote:

I want to swap the order of columns four and five, without breaking
(indeed, without otherwise altering) the valid markup.

Time to learn regexes.

Then probably find yourself an editor that allows reasonable regex
processing, and to allow this processing to be applied only to a
highlighted selection. You could do it over the whole file with sed,
but that's often ghastly if you're just re-arranging one chunk of a
large file.

Sadly most editors that "support regexes" have bizarre, inconsistent
and partial ideas about regex syntax. Be careful here, especially with
TextPad -- try jEdit.

[Al Klein]

On 29 Aug 2006 03:00:46 -0700, "Andy Dingley" <di*****@codesmiths.com>
wrote:

>Then probably find yourself an editor that allows reasonable regex
processing, and to allow this processing to be applied only to a
highlighted selection. You could do it over the whole file with sed,
but that's often ghastly if you're just re-arranging one chunk of a
large file.

Or take the chunk that has to be changed to another file by itself,
change it and paste it back, if doing the whole file is easier.