Can you mail merge via tezt
You're looking to merge data from a text file into a template using a text-based tool!
Yes, you can achieve mail merging using a text-based tool like tex
or sed
. Here are a few examples:
Using tex
You can use the tex
command to merge data from a text file into a template. For example, let's say you have a template file template.txt
with placeholders like {name}
and {email}
, and a data file data.txt
with the actual values:
$ tex -e 's/{name}/$(cat data.txt | grep name | cut -d: -f2)/' template.txt > output.txt
This command uses tex
to search and replace the placeholders in template.txt
with the corresponding values from data.txt
. The grep
and cut
commands are used to extract the values from data.txt
.
Using sed
You can also use sed
to achieve the same result:
$ sed -e 's/{name}/$(sed -n '/name/p' data.txt | cut -d: -f2)/' template.txt > output.txt
This command uses sed
to search and replace the placeholders in template.txt
with the corresponding values from data.txt
. The inner sed
command extracts the value from data.txt
, and the outer sed
command replaces the placeholder.
Using awk
Another option is to use awk
to merge the data:
$ awk -v template=template.txt -v data=data.txt '{print $0}' template.txt | awk -v OFS="" '{gsub(/{name}/, $(NR==1? $2 : "")); gsub(/{email}/, $(NR==1? $3 : "")); print}' > output.txt
This command uses awk
to read the template file and replace the placeholders with the corresponding values from the data file. The NR
variable is used to keep track of the current line number, and the gsub
function is used to replace the placeholders.
These are just a few examples of how you can achieve mail merging using text-based tools. The specific command will depend on the format of your template and data files, as well as your personal preference for the tool you use.