Here Document Terminator Problems

tekniko has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I still play the old BBS game TradeWars 2002 and created a program to help analyze the CIM download output. However, I get the error

Can't find string terminator "EODATA" anywhere before EOF at ports.pl line 30.

when I attempt to run it. The code is below. Any help and/or suggestions appreciated!

#!/usr/bin/perl -w 
use strict; 

my $file = shift || die "SYNOPSIS: $0 datafile\n"; 

open( IN, $file ); 
my @in = <IN>; 
close IN; 

# 
#  The raw data is almost already in perl format. 
# 
my @out; 
foreach( @in ) 
{ 
   last if /: ENDINTERROG/; 
   push @out, "};\n\nsub ports\n{\n" if /:/; 
   next if /:/; 
  
   s/-\s*/-/g;          # remove whitespace after minus sign 
   s/(\d+)\%/0.$1/g;    # change n% to 0.n 
  
   # finally, turn it into a hash reference 
   s/^\s*(\d+) (.*)$/   \'$1\' => [ qw ( $2 ) ],/; 
  
   push @out, $_; 
} 

open OUT, ">$file.pm"; 
print OUT<<EODATA; 
sub warps 
{ 
@out 
}; 
1; 
EODATA 
close OUT;
[download]

Edit Masem 2002-02-19 - Changed title from "TW2002"

Comment on Here Document Terminator Problems Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.

Re: TW2002
by grep (Monsignor) on Feb 18, 2002 at 19:47 UTC

grep

grep> rm -f /bin/laden

[reply]

Re: Re: TW2002

by tekniko (Deacon) on Feb 18, 2002 at 19:54 UTC

Yup, that's it! Thanks!

[reply]

Re: TW2002
by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Feb 18, 2002 at 19:46 UTC

------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

Don't go borrowing trouble. For programmers, this means Worry only about what you need to implement.

[reply]

Re(2): TW2002

by dmmiller2k (Chaplain) on Feb 18, 2002 at 20:07 UTC

Don't you need a semi-colon after EODATA? *shrugs*

Not only DON'T you need one, you CANNOT have one. If you do, then the line containing EODATA that perl is looking for will not be found.

Check out Why don't my <<HERE documents work?.

The end tag for a Here Doc must appear as the only thing on the line terminating the Here Doc.

As grep points out, the most likely cause of the problem is whitespace after the EODATA on the line preceding close OUT; (2nd to last line).

Update: for clarification, I mean you cannot have a semicolon on the line with the end tag, 'EODATA', as in:

  print OUT <<EODATA; <-- given this, as stated
sub warps 
{ 
@out 
};
1; 
EODATA;
      ^
      |
      +--- semicolon here won't work
[download]

Of course, putting it on the next line is syntactically legal, and of course works.

dmm

If you GIVE a man a fish you feed him for a day
But, TEACH him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

Re: Re: TW2002

by chromatic (Archbishop) on Feb 18, 2002 at 20:02 UTC

The semicolon is only necessary when declaring that a heredoc is present -- that is, the first instance. However, a newline after the marker is usually a good idea. (Windows machines often have trouble disambiguating these tokens without some help.)

[reply]


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