[comp.lang.perl] .newsrc scanner, and whitespace remover

ramsey@NPIRS.Purdue.EDU (Ed Ramsey) (03/30/91)

I was wondering if anyone had written a program that scans .newsrc
files to check for unread news.  I have two purposes in mind for
this program: 1) to create a new, updated newsrc for any user who
reads news for the first time, and 2) to print out a list of
groups a user is subscribed to that have unread news. 

Also, I have been writing some perl scripts to process new account
forms, and find that the data entry people are likely to put any
kind of whitespace they can think of before or after any data they
enter.  The problem for me is that after split'ing or / /'ing for
the item I need to remove all before and after whitespace for each 
data item.  I have been doing this with varying degrees of success.
Is there a sure fire =~ way of removing leading and trailing 
whitespace that doesn't impact the performance of the script too 
badly (something like $foo =~ /\S*/)?

-Ed

Ed Ramsey ramsey@npirs.purdue.edu 317/494-6616 FAX/494-0535
currently: "User Services Manager" soon to be: "Network Services Manager"