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

[rustom]

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#