Suggestions for how to approach this problem?

[John Salerno]

Dave Hansen wrote:

> Questions:
> 
> 1) Do the citation numbers always begin in column 1?

Yes, that's one consistency at least. :)

> 2) Are the citation numbers always followed by a period and then at
> least one whitespace character?

Yes, it seems to be either one or two whitespaces.

> find the beginning of each cite.  then I would output each cite
> through a state machine that would reduce consecutive whitespace
> characters (space, tab, newline) into a single character, separating
> each cite with a newline.

Interesting idea! I'm not sure what "state machine" is, but it sounds 
like you are suggesting that I more or less separate each reference, 
process it, and then rewrite it to a new file in the cleaner format? 
That might work pretty well.