in reply to To regex or not to regex

{local $/="====\n";
while( <> ){
  open (NEW, "> $old_file$..txt") || die $!; #open output
  chomp;
  print NEW;
}
}

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Re: Re: To regex or not to regex
by abstracts (Hermit) on Mar 11, 2002 at 06:46 UTC
    This code is slightly broken because it ignores a requirement that was specified by the problem (every section starts with a line containing a number which is the number of records) and relies on an assumption instead (every section is terminated by ==== followed by "\n"). There are at least three cases where this would break, and they do happen more often than not.
    • When there is a record ending with "====", this code breaks the section into more files than it should.
    • When there is a space after the "====", then it won't match the input record separator, thus 2 sections will be merged in one file. This space would not be visible to the eye so debugging this problem is not easy.
    • When there is an empty line after the last "====", you will have an additional empty file.
    So, the wisdom behind this story: follow the specs carefully and don't golf when you don't need to.

    Hope this helps,,,

    Aziz,,,

[reply]
      Just realized that your post was targeted at Anonymous' post and not mine. DUH!!!!
      That said, I almost used '====' as the separator, but my first test went into a weird loop, so I did not continue along that path.

      mndoci

      "What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done?"-Sherlock Holmes in 'A study in scarlet'

[reply]
      Yes it does rely on that assumption. I did have lines in my code that removed leading whitespace, but I didn't think about trailing whitespace. As for records between the # and '====', they will nto have any '====', so I guess I am safe, but I agree, my solution is not general. Thanks for the warning!!

      mndoci

      "What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done?"-Sherlock Holmes in 'A study in scarlet'

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