http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=970

Regular expressions can be used to break up strings. This is what split does. The join function on the other hand takes a list of strings and combines them together again.

$line="Bart Lisa Maggie Marge Homer"; @simpsons=split(/\s/, $line); #splits $line and uses a piece of whites +pace as a delimiter. #@simpsons now contains ("Bart","","Lisa","Maggie","Marge","Homer"); #notice there is an extra space between Bart and Lisa so we get an emp +ty element in the array there. #lets try a better delimiter that will eliminate that from happening @simpsons=split(/\s+/ $line); #now splits $line on 1 or more whitespac +e characters #@simpsons now containts ("Bart","Lisa","Maggie","Marge","Homer");

Suppose we had a list of records of the form
Name|Phone Number|Address
We could open a file while which contained those records and do something like this:
open FILE, "data.txt"; while(<FILE>) chomp; ($name,$phone,$address)=split(/\|/); #splits the default variable $ +_ on | #notice we have to put \| sinc +e | is a metacharacter #that represents or. Otherwise + we'd be matching #empty string or empty string #then we place the results in +variables instead of a list #the parentheses around the va +riable names need #to be there for this to work +properly print "Name: $name\n"; #Now we print out the informat +ion in a more readable form print "Phone Number: $phone\n"; print "Address: $address\n\n"; } close FILE;

The function join can be used to reconstruct split up values into one string again. The syntax for calling this function is join($glue, @array) or join($glue,$var1,$var2....) The glue is simply the string that goes between two strings to hold them together. Here are a few examples:
$string=join(" ",@simpsons); #string now equals "Bart Lisa Maggie Marge Homer"; $name="Bob"; $phone="555-5555"; $address="42 Tulip Lane, Holland MI, 49423"; $string=join("|",$name,$phone,$address); #$string is now equal to "Bob|555-5555|42 Tulip Lane, Holland MI, 4942 +3"

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: split and join
by jeroenes (Priest) on Jan 08, 2001 at 18:46 UTC
    You may find supersplit useful as well. It does split/join at multiple levels, so uses multi-dimensional arrays. For example
    open FILE, "data.txt" $array=supersplit('|', \*FILE );
    Would result in one array containing all lines as rows and the separate items as columns. The first item for example, can be accessed by $array->[0][0]. See POD of the script for more examples and doc.

    Jeroen
    I was dreaming of guitarnotes that would irritate an executive kind of guy (FZ)

RE: split and join
by Anonymous Monk on May 10, 2000 at 23:36 UTC
    I have a question...not really pertaining to the subject at hand, but it is bugging me nonetheless. How come there isn't a link back to the main contents table for this tutorial from here, and if there is (and I am missing something) how come it is difficult to find?
      What about the link to Tutorials in the information nodelet on the right?
Re: split and join
by Anonymous Monk on Dec 18, 2001 at 07:11 UTC
    using the chomp and split functions is fine for splitting records with 3 fields, but supposing you had 100 fields and you only wanted the 55th and 80th field values. there would be no real point in extracting all field values. Is there not a way to search/locate the nth delimeter ("|") and then extract the field directly following?
Error in the example code
by Anonymous Monk on Sep 10, 2001 at 05:39 UTC
    Hello all,

    I just thought I'd let you know there is an error in this example code.

    @simpsons=split(/\s+/ $line); #now splits $line on 1 or more whitespac +e characters #@simpsons now containts ("Bart","Lisa","Maggie","Marge","Homer");

    You are missing a comma (/\s+/,$line). On a seperate note does anyone know how I would join an array with a comman except for the last value.

    ie I have an array of postcodes, that I am going to print out as a string.

    $postcodes=join(", ",@Postcode_array); print "any area. postcode1, postcode2, postcode3\n"; What I would like to print out is this. print "any area. postcode1, postcode2 & postcode3\n";

    Any help would be great... Thanks, Greg

    Edit: g0n - code tags & formatting

      my @arr = (1 .. 10); print join(', ', @arr[0 .. $#arr - 1]), " & $arr[$#arr]\n";
      --
      <http://www.dave.org.uk>

      "The first rule of Perl club is you don't talk about Perl club."

      first store the length of array by using count variable and then exclude the last element of array... is this a good idea...?
Re: split and join
by Anonymous Monk on Jan 04, 2002 at 03:52 UTC
    just wondering if u had

    $line="Bart Lisa Maggie Marge Homer blah blah"; @simpsons=split(/\s+/, $line);

    what i wanted is to split so as to get

    @simpsons = {"Bart", "Lisa", "Maggie", "Marge", "Homer blah blah"}

    notice the last part i want it all attached. Assume i dont know how many "blah"s follow after "Homer".

    Edit: g0n - code tags & formatting

      Simple. Use a counter to find the numbers of the Caps in the string and then do..while op until you reach that number.
Re: split and join
by nobettername (Initiate) on Nov 10, 2005 at 08:06 UTC
    Hi, Can anyone tell me how to split the data {"0.7591.4166.6352.6465.4574.1653.833"} into {"0.759","1.416","6.635","2.646","5.457","4.165","3.833"} Thanks in advance.
      $data = "0.7591.4166.6352.6465.4574.1653.833"; @data = $data =~ /\d\.\d\d\d/g;
Re: split and join
by Anonymous Monk on Apr 22, 2002 at 22:38 UTC
    what if you need to split by the plus character "+" the compiler keeps on chucking a spazz. is there anyway to get around this?? simon.hilton@sun.com
      split takes a pattern (more or less a regular expression, though there are special cases you might want to read up on), not a static string to separate chunks in the input string, and it happens that the '+' character is special, so you just need to escape it like so:
      @array = split '\+', 'abc+def'; print "@array";
      gives abc def By the way, you might want to provide the actual error message in future if you need assistance, as "chucking a spazz" covers a lot of bases!

      --
      I'd like to be able to assign to an luser

      '+' is a metacharacter which has meaning in regular expressions. To match a literal plus, you need to escape ('backwhack') it.

      split /\+/;

      After Compline,
      Zaxo