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+A gawk script to convert smart quotes
+======
+
+
+
+I manage a personal website and edit the web pages by hand. Since I don't have many pages on my site, this works well for me, letting me "scratch the itch" of getting into the site's code.
+
+When I updated my website's design recently, I decided to turn all the plain quotes into "smart quotes," or quotes that look like those used in print material: “” instead of "".
+
+Editing all of the quotes by hand would take too long, so I decided to automate the process of converting the quotes in all of my HTML files. But doing so via a script or program requires some intelligence. The script needs to know when to convert a plain quote to a smart quote, and which quote to use.
+
+You can use different methods to convert quotes. Greg Pittman wrote a [Python script][1] for fixing smart quotes in text. I wrote mine in GNU [awk][2] (gawk).
+
+> Get our awk cheat sheet. [Free download][3].
+
+To start, I wrote a simple gawk function to evaluate a single character. If that character is a quote, the function determines if it should output a plain quote or a smart quote. The function looks at the previous character; if the previous character is a space, the function outputs a left smart quote. Otherwise, the function outputs a right smart quote. The script does the same for single quotes.
+```
+function smartquote (char, prevchar) {
+
+ # print smart quotes depending on the previous character
+
+ # otherwise just print the character as-is
+
+
+
+ if (prevchar ~ /\s/) {
+
+ # prev char is a space
+
+ if (char == "'") {
+
+ printf("‘");
+
+ }
+
+ else if (char == "\"") {
+
+ printf("“");
+
+ }
+
+ else {
+
+ printf("%c", char);
+
+ }
+
+ }
+
+ else {
+
+ # prev char is not a space
+
+ if (char == "'") {
+
+ printf("’");
+
+ }
+
+ else if (char == "\"") {
+
+ printf("”");
+
+ }
+
+ else {
+
+ printf("%c", char);
+
+ }
+
+ }
+
+}
+
+```
+
+With that function, the body of the gawk script processes the HTML input file character by character. The script prints all text verbatim when inside an HTML tag (for example, ``. Outside any HTML tags, the script uses the `smartquote()` function to print text. The `smartquote()` function does the work of evaluating when to print plain quotes or smart quotes.
+```
+function smartquote (char, prevchar) {
+
+ ...
+
+}
+
+
+
+BEGIN {htmltag = 0}
+
+
+
+{
+
+ # for each line, scan one letter at a time:
+
+
+
+ linelen = length($0);
+
+
+
+ prev = "\n";
+
+
+
+ for (i = 1; i <= linelen; i++) {
+
+ char = substr($0, i, 1);
+
+
+
+ if (char == "<") {
+
+ htmltag = 1;
+
+ }
+
+
+
+ if (htmltag == 1) {
+
+ printf("%c", char);
+
+ }
+
+ else {
+
+ smartquote(char, prev);
+
+ prev = char;
+
+ }
+
+
+
+ if (char == ">") {
+
+ htmltag = 0;
+
+ }
+
+ }
+
+
+
+ # add trailing newline at end of each line
+
+ printf ("\n");
+
+}
+
+```
+
+Here's an example:
+```
+gawk -f quotes.awk test.html > test2.html
+
+```
+
+Sample input:
+```
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ Test page
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
