I have a file that contains a lot of odd slang and dialects that were written as they sound, and I want to standardize them to the ASCII character set. I want a readable script that I will understand at a glance a year later despite not touching a computer in the interim.
Maybe I am going about this the wrong way, but I want to initialize individual arrays for each character [a-z]. Then step through each character of the input word or string, passing these to a Case that matches them to the respective [a-z] array while passing unmatched characters unchanged. In the end I need to retain correlation with the original file line.
In my first attempt, I got to the point of matching each character to the name of the array using the case, but only as the name of the array as a string of text. So like, the “a” array is “aaa”. Now I’m trying to relearn how to call that placeholder as an array again, like a pointer. I can make it a variable with printf -v. but then calling that variable as a pointer to the array alludes me. I don’t know how to double expand a variable inside an array like “${$var[@]}”. I’ll figure that out. This is just where I am at in terms of abstract reference of ideas. Solve it, don’t; I do not care about that aspect; solving my method is not related to what I am asking here.
What I am asking is what ways are used to solve this type of problem in general, with the constraint of readability? Egrep, sed, awk? Do it all within the json to maintain the relationship to the original key/value? Associative arrays have never really clicked for me in bash. Maybe that is the better solution? It is just a hobby thing, not work, school, or whatnot. I’m asking hackers that find this kind of problem casual fun social smalltalk.
If you have raw jdon, then take a look at jq. It’s amazing for read json text in bash
readable script that I will understand at a glance a year later
Well that rules out bash
this sounds like a python kind of problem. i’m all for abusing bash features but there comes a point when there’s just too many brackets.
Yeah, I probably should use Python, it just takes me longer and I am much less likely to keep hacking around with it later. It feels like a foreign language relative to bash. The problem came from greping using for loops, so I’m in that mindset. Point taken though.
If it’s a regular enough format, you could just use DuckDB. Are you using it as a challenge?
I think this post could use some small example with what you have vs what you want to get
Depending on how I read your description it’s either doable with bash and grep or probably doable but a lot of hassle compared to using something else than bash
jake
Jake
j4ke
Jak3
j@k3
JAK€
jπ⸦kE
𝚥ᎪᏦ⋲
ꓙᏎ🅺Ꮛ
𞋕ꮜ𝈲𝈁
᜴ᚣᜩᗕ
It is not this, but same problem scope. Resolve all to “jake” for further processing. Also specifically looking for that ck.If you want
᜴ᚣᜩᗕto get resolved tojakethen bash will be a pain to use. I would use pythonFor each ASCII letter create a list of non-ASCII characters that look similar. Then, for each word you want to match construct a regex
dictionary = { ...'j': ['j', 'J', '𝚥', '𞋕', ...
regex='' for letter in 'jake': regex += f'[{"".join(dictionary[letter])}]'- so after whole loop the regex would look a bit like (I’m cutting out a lot of characters to save on copy-pasting)
[jJ𝚥𞋕][aA4@][kKᏦ🅺][eE3€]
>>> import re >>> r='[jJ𝚥𞋕][aA4@][kKᏦ🅺][eE3€]' >>> re.fullmatch(r, 'jake') <re.Match object; span=(0, 4), match='jake'> >>> re.fullmatch(r, 'joke') >>>In general the group of problems that you are touching here is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_metric but I’m not sure if there is an algorithm that would be so “visual” matching
trcould definitely do some work here. maybe something like, echo each word and its translated counterpart, sort on first column, and thenecho $col1 >> $col0for each line? it’s a start at least
Similar to the other comment, not sure if you’ve ruled out writing a Python script? For what you’re describing Python would be able to easily tackle your requirements and still be readable since it’s just a script you can launch whenever you need. Python is also pretty easy to pick up so if you’re familiar with scripting then it could be a fun learning experience (if you don’t already know it).
Other scripting languages could work too, just feel like Bash will be less readable if you’re writing a massive script like that.
