Fantastic. i am going to mark the thread totally SOLVED. I now have two methods of handling vast quantities of texts in a very short time. There are slight differences between the methods and probably each will be more appropriate at different times depending on the balance of text content and which sender/phone they came from.
I just processed a small bunch of texts from 2 senders/phones and the results are both perfectly useable for my needs:
dt4.awk method:
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23.07.2015 17:17:26 I just have 2 keep drowning it in gaviscon and coffee. You comn past 2nite?
23.07.2015 18:19:54 Wat time r y gettn here?
23.07.2015 18:58:58 I doubt it
23.07.2015 19:32:59 CHARSET=UTF-8;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:not sure on =E2=80=9Clexmark=E2=80=9D but the red one is with him and the ye=
llow one with me (for later sharing). Paul
23.07.2015 19:49:15 CHARSET=UTF-8;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:can=E2=80=99t afford an iwatch - Oh no - now i can\, of course :)
24.07.2015 12:20:53 Dnt know you mean mesh in the grille? Is it up 4 sale?
25.07.2015 11:44:14 Man i got the depo and my whole knee has swelled up\, its affecting the knee movement
MochiBash method:
Code: Select all
23.07.2015 17:17:26 I just have 2 keep drowning it in gaviscon and coffee. You comn past 2nite?
23.07.2015 18:19:54 Wat time r y gettn here?
23.07.2015 18:58:58 I doubt it
23.07.2015 19:32:59 not sure on =E2=80=9Clexmark=E2=80=9D but the red one is with him and the ye=
llow one with me (for later sharing). Paul
23.07.2015 19:49:15 can=E2=80=99t afford an iwatch - Oh no - now i can\, of course :)
24.07.2015 12:20:53 Dnt know you mean mesh in the grille? Is it up 4 sale?
25.07.2015 11:44:14 Man i got the depo and my whole knee has swelled up\, its affecting the knee movement
Thank you all contributors and especially Mochi and 6502coder for the final results. This is a wonderful timesaver for me. And I have learnt plenty about bash and awk (regex and other stuff too) on the way. I started out hoping I could automate some small steps using geany and ended up with a vastly quicker more accurate and almost totally automated process. Thank you!
musher0 wrote:When will you be handing 6502coder the "Oscar for Best Coder"?
Do we simple mortals get consolation prizes?
Maybe a nomination?
Yep, you all get a nomination for "best contributing coders of 2015". If I could i would make some animated gif Gold, Silver and Bronze badges to award. As it is I hope the following congratulatory images will suffice. Many thanks all for the assistance!
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(ps: thanks to "sevenoaksart" and "Heathers animations" for the gifs)