PROGRAMMABLE DATA EXTRACTOR, DATAANALYZER,AND PRINTER REPORT GENERATOR

In addition to functioning as a conventional printer, a printer system responds to triggering strings of characters within incoming pages of data by calling upon a meta-command interpreter to execute meta-commands such as “#if . . . #endif,” “#for . . . #next,” and “#mid . . . ” embedded within templates containing data and print commands which describe families of documents or reports. The incoming pages can be stripped of their printer control codes and can be then used as rectangular arrays of characters which control the customization and reduction of the templates into one or more customized documents or reports containing data extracted from the incoming pages inserted at points marked by the “#mid” meta-command and similar meta-commands. A first template, with a “#startform” command, can cause the meta-command interpreter to process subsequent incoming pages against a designated template without the need for further triggering. The system provides global search and replace functions for all incoming pages as well as optional double-byte to single-byte conversion.