Customizing the delimiter

You can redefine the delimiters by assigning a string to the built-in variable delim. Use the following syntax to define new delimiters:

delim=<string>;

The <string> defines the set of characters to use as delimiters.

The delimiter is specified at the beginning of a script or at the beginning of a rule, before any pattern matching.

• If a delimiter statement is placed before all of the rules, the delimiters apply to all rules.

• If a delimiter statement is placed in a rule, ASL overrides any previous delimiter definitions.

  In this example, the delimiter is ":?" for RULE2, but "|" for RULE1 and RULE3.

  delim=":?";
  START {
      RULE1 RULE2
  }
  RULE1 {
     delim="|";
   RULE3
  }
  

  The new delimiters override all of the default delimiters except for eol and fs. Each character included in the <string> is a separate delimiter.

  delim = ":?";
  

  When the string :? is assigned to delim, it defines two delimiters: a colon and a question mark. If input data contained the combination (“:?”), ASL interprets the data as two delimiters in series.

  The match for some characters requires a special syntax. To use tabs and returns as delimiters, use the special syntax within the quotation marks, as described in GUID-F0CF2B17-5935-4B1C-9EC4-0323E256476D.html#GUID-F0CF2B17-5935-4B1C-9EC4-0323E256476D___PATTERNS_53250.

  Note:

  For most cases, use the eol pattern match instead of line feed or carriage return. The eol character is a delimiter by default and cannot be overridden.

  An alternative to using the delim variable is to use a combination of the rep() function and the notany() function. For example:

  x:rep(notany(":?"))
  

  In the example, ASL assigns to the variable x everything that appears up to a question mark or a colon.