How to modify this script?

[Gertjan Klein]

Kurt Hansen wrote:

> To convert tab-separated text lines into a HTML-table:

As you apparently didn't receive answers that worked for you I tried to 
get what you want to work and test it in Gedit. Here's the result:

$<
lines = $GEDIT_SELECTED_TEXT.split("\n");
output = '<table\>\n';

max_columns = 0
for line in lines:
     col_count = len(line.split("\t"))
     if col_count \> max_columns:
         max_columns = col_count

for line in lines:
     if line == '':
         continue

     output += '<tr\>';

     columns = line.split("\t");
     if len(columns) == 1:
         output += ('<td colspan=%s\>' % max_columns) + line + 
'</td\></tr\>\n'
         continue

     for item in columns:
         output += '<td\>' + item + '</td\>'

     output += '</tr\>\n';

output += '</table\>';
return output
 >

(Watch out for line wraps! I don't know how to stop Thunderbird from 
inserting them.)

It really isn't all that difficult. The code determines the (maximum) 
number of columns present. It then processes each line; if one is found 
with exactly one column (i.e., no tabs), it applies a colspan equal to 
the maximum number of columns. This works for your test and similar data.

As I said, this is copy/pasted from a working Gedit snippet. If it works 
for you, I'd try experimenting a bit -- what should happen when the 
number of columns is larger than 1 but less than the maximum? 
Programming isn't magic. You might start enjoying it.

HTH,
Gertjan.