🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> "Steve" == Steve Silberberg <stevebo@onramp.net> writes:

    Steve> I am trying to write a program that will re-order a file so
    Steve> that the paragraphs are lined up.  Then I can just run diff
    Steve> on the result.

    Steve> So for instance if I had 2 text files, each with 3
    Steve> paragraphs:

    Steve> Text File 1 
    Steve> ----------------- 

    Steve> abc 123

    Steve> I am in cyberspace

    Steve> this is a text file


    Steve> Text File 2 
    Steve> ---------------- 

    Steve> this is a text file

    Steve> abc 134

    Steve> I am in cyberspace


    Steve> Output 
    Steve> ------------- 

    Steve> abc 134

    Steve> I am in cyberspace

    Steve> this is a text file


    Steve> I'd like the program to reorder Text File 2 so I can then
    Steve> run the result through diff.  I realize that if the two
    Steve> files are completely different, the output will look pretty
    Steve> wacky, but I'm not too worried abouyt that.

    Steve> Any ideas on how to write such a program?  Does such a
    Steve> utility already exist?  Many many thanks in advance. 

First of all, this does certainly not belong in gnu.gcc.help (for help
on the Gnu C Compiler), so I've set the followups.

Don't know if this kind of program exists, but it should be fairly
straight-forward to write at least a quick-and-dirty version.  I'm not
sure exactly what your criteria for the output would be, but from your
example it seeems like you would want the output to have the same
paragraph order as the first inpit file.  Read in the files into some
kind of datastructure, like a linked list of paragraphs.  Go through
the second linked list, and "sort" it after what the first list looks
like.  This program will run in time proportional to the square of the
number of paragraphs, so if you're handling huge files with a lot of
paragraphs it might be slow, and you'll have to come up with something
better (sorting the lists might help a little).

Print out the results according to what the first input file looked
like.

Hth,
Tom
-- 
Wherever I lay my .emacs, that's my ${HOME}