I have been able to extractt he text from Word Docs with the following
bit of code:
#!/usr/bin/perl
# Parse word docs fed in at the command line
$file = $ARGV[0];
$startFlag = 0;
open(FILE,"<$file")||die $!;
while(<FILE>){
        chomp;
    if(s/^.*cgrid {//){
        $startFlag = 1;
        s/\\[a-z]+\d\d//g;
    }
    if($startFlag == 1){
        s/\\par //;
        s/[}{][}{]$//;
        s/\\[rl]quote /'/g;
        $h .= "$_\n";
    }

close(FILE);
open(FILE,'>c:\temp\word_conversion.txt')||die $!;
print FILE $h;
close(FILE);
exit;

This only works on word 6/95. Has anyone been able to parse a word 97
doc?

Paul Coogan

Use Automation, and the SaveAs functionality to save the document
as text!

Scott
--
Look at Softbase Systems' client/server tools, www.softbase.com
Check out the Essential 97 package for Windows 95 www.skwc.com/essent
All my other cool web pages are available from that site too!
My demo tape, artwork, poetry, The Windows 95 Book FAQ, and more.

Unfortunately the document file format of Word documents is that complicated,
that you cannot even be sure that your first version works. E.g. it will
fail for fastsaved documents, for documents with bigger texts, and for
documents that are internally too much segmented by what reason ever. Same
for Word 97. ... :-(

Because of these reasons you might have fun using OLE::Storage (or Laola)
instead, to be found at your CPAN site or at:

        http://wwwwbs.cs.tu-berlin.de/~schwartz/pmh/

Regards,

Martin

--
// Le degre zero de l'ecriture? Zero probleme!

That's very nice if you are receiving the Word file on a PC with
Word installed, or if you can get the sender to do the SaveAs.
The real problem is when a PC user forwards a Word file to a non-PC
system.

--
Charles G. Margolin                   DSSD Internal Information Services

My solution was to use network protocols:  I mailed the Word file back to
the sender together with a note reading "I SAID PLAIN TEXT, DAMMIT!".

--
Rhodri James  *-*  Wildebeeste herder to the masses
If you don't know who I work for, you can't misattribute my words to them

... but that's a herring of a different colour