With so many people writing so many complicated scripts, I thought I would share this little utility with you.

Scenario - I had data of this form:

1  Dublin Central  7 1  Dublin North  7 1  Dublin South  7    21  Cork  7 21  Coachford 7 21  Kinsale  7 22  Mallow  5 23  Bandon  5 24  Youghal  5 25  Fermoy  5 26  Macroom 5 27  Bantry  5 28  Skibbereen 5 29  

and I wanted:

003531 Dublin Central
003531 Dublin North
003531 Dublin South
0035321 Cork
0035321 Coachford
0035321 Kinsale
0035322 Mallow
0035323 Bandon
0035324 Youghal
0035325 Fermoy

Quick solution - a Perl script

Code:

while (<>) {        @have = /\d+\s+\D+/g;        print join("\n",@have);        }

followed by a quick global edit of the output to add in the "00353"s.

Perl is a excellent tool for this sort of thing ... I've just done something similar for the codes for Mexico, but that's a whole different 6 line script!

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