Newbie: text filtering.

[Aesop]

Heya peoples.
        Just a quick question. Writing a script that takes a line of
text, searches for a  particular part of a word, then turns that word
into an entry in a resulting HTML output. For example, A collection of
pdf files is catalouged by a text file containing filename and
description. I am searching for the filename on the basis of its
extension ".pdf" and assuming the rest of the line is the description.
The output is a line of HTML that comprises a table, complete with link
to the pdf, and description.

Eveything is working fine. But on the basis of fixed length columns.
Which they aren't.

How could I go about say searching for the ".pdf", then working
backwards to find the start of the word?


In zeros and ones,
Ambrose. S.