catch multiple empty lines in file in tcl - tcl

Question

There are 4 empty space in my file,set in wr_fp.I want to catch four empty space in code. But below code is not working.
while {[gets $wr_fp line3] >= 0} {
if {[regexp "\n\s+\n\s+\n\s+\n" $line3]} { puts "found 4 empty lines"}
}

Answer 1

tl;dr: Don't put REs in "quotes", put them in {braces}.
The problem is that you've put your RE in quotes, so that it is actually this:
s+
s+
s+
Because of Tcl's general substitution rules, \n becomes a newline and \s becomes a simple s. Putting the RE in braces inhibits this (unwanted in this case) behaviour.

Answer 2

this is my answer.I want this.
while {[gets $rd_fp line] >= 0} {
if {[string match "" $line]} {
if {[expr $count % 4] == 1} {puts "found 4 space"}
incr count
}
}

Answer 3

The gets / chan gets command reads one line at a time and discards the newline character from each line, so your test will never succeed. You need to read in the full contents of the file at once:
set txt [chan read $wr_fp]
if {[regexp {\n\s+\n\s+\n\s+\n} $txt]} { puts "found 4 empty lines"}
Note that you need to use braces around the regular expression as Donal explains.
On some typical pitfalls of RE formulation:
do you really intend to specify that there must be at least one whitespace character on each 'empty' line? If you want to allow lines with no characters at all between the newlines, use \s* instead of \s+.
Also note that this regular expression will match ranges with more than four newlines: the extra newlines will be consumed by one of the \s+ groups. If you want to disallow extra newlines, match with (e.g.) [ \t\f\r] (or any other combination of whitespace you want) instead of \s. Note that this means the expression will match exactly three lines with nothing but blanks, tabs, form feeds, and returns, the lines surrounded and separated by newlines: you might want to extend it with one more subgroup to match the fourth line.
I'm a bit mystified by your solution as described in your own answer, since it doesn't do what was specified in the question. With the following text file:
abc
def
ghi
jkl
mno
pqr
stu
vwx
yz.
(where there is a tab character in the second line after "pqr")
and assuming count has the value 0 when the code is called, your code outputs "found 4 space" after reading the blank lines after "def", "pqr", and "vwx", but not after the line before "stu", where your question indicated it should be.
This code
set count 0
while {[gets $rd_fp line] >= 0} {
if {[string is space $line]} {
incr count
if {$count == 4} {puts "found 4 space"}
} else {
set count 0
}
}
does do what you asked for (nearly): it accepts lines containing whitespace as empty, and it prints its message only after finding four consecutive empty lines. The major difference from the specification in your question is that it also accepts lines without any characters as empty. To match your specification, string is space -strict $line should be used instead.
Documentation: chan, gets, if, incr, puts, regexp, set, string, while