seperating a string with substr...

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

Good day/night all,

Another simple question of many i seem to bring, i was wondering if you might be able to help me with this thing :

while($data){ $output=substr(0,8,''); print $output; }
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The above code appears to work for me, and i even think i understand it, well i'd appreciate if you could point out if i'm wrong, or better still advise a better way of seperating the data.

1. While $data is true, that is while it contains bytes, except if there remains one byte that happens to be zero(0), in which case its false. To get around that could be :

while(length($data) > 0){;}
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2. $output is filled with the first 8 bytes of data, with the substr() function and those bytes within $data are replaced with (no data), thus $data is reduced in size by indeed 8 bytes. Prints $output illustration purposes obviously.

thanks again,

Isaac.

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Re: seperating a string with substr... by davidrw (Prior) on Jun 29, 2006 at 23:44 UTC
I think you meant `substr($data,0,8,'')` .. otherwise $data doesn't get modified and it'll be an infinite loop :) Note that re: your #1, $data is also logically false if it is an empty string `''` or `undef` (see True or False? A Quick Reference Guide for a good reference) As for an alternative, you could also use a regex (there's probably a `split` solution as well--this is close: `my @pieces = split /(.{1,3})/, $x`): `my @pieces = $data =~ /(.{1,8})/g;` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: seperating a string with substr... by blokhead (Monsignor) on Jun 30, 2006 at 00:07 UTC
A little cleaner than m//g or split is to use unpack for this purpose: `my @pieces = unpack "(A8)*", $data;` [download] Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember that this unpack syntax (paren-groupings and star) may not have been around for all of Perl 5, so it's worth double-checking with your version of perl. blokhead	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: seperating a string with substr... by ysth (Canon) on Jun 30, 2006 at 05:05 UTC
If $data may contain newlines, you'd want instead: `my @pieces = $data =~ /.{1,8}/gs;` [download] (Also note that your () were unnecessary, since list context //g will return the entire match if there are no submatches.)	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: seperating a string with substr... by abachus (Monk) on Jun 30, 2006 at 00:04 UTC
ooops :) fwiw i have an open window with the code and it has substr($data,0,8,'') in it! I was trying to word the english properly and overlooked the most important bit, the code...previewed like about 3 times aswell, 'shrug' oh well. As for if $data contains no bytes, or undef or a zero its false isn't it ? nothing else ? The regex bit looks interesting though, i think i'll go have a play with that, thanks ! Isaac.	[reply]


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