foo.lua

local excluded = {["<para>"]=true,
                 ["<eod>"]=true}

local function write_table(data, fname)
    local file = io.open(fname, "w")
    io.output(file)
    io.write(table.concat(data, " "))
    io.close(file)
end

local function get_second_column(line, separator)
    local start_pos, end_pos = line:find(separator, 1, true)
    if not start_pos then error("unable to find separator") end
    local sub_pos = end_pos + 1

    start_pos, end_pos = line:find(separator, sub_pos, true)
    if not start_pos then error("unable to find separator") end
    return line:sub(sub_pos, start_pos - 1)
end

local excluded = {["<para>"]=true,
                 ["<eod>"]=true}

function read_lines(fname, separator)
  print(fname)
  local cols = {}
  local i = 1
  for line in io.lines(fname) do
    local res = get_second_column(line, separator)

    if not excluded[res] then
        cols[i] = res
        i = i + 1
    end
  end
  return cols
end


function write_table(data, fname)
    local file = io.open(fname, "w")
    io.output(file)
    io.write(table.concat(data, " "))
    io.close(file)
end

local separator = ";"

local column2 = read_lines(arg[1], separator)
write_table(column2, "glove_corpus.txt")