split() help

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

I have a file that i have to read...the data is delimited by string 'chr(9)' sample data

DataAchr(9)DataBchr(9)DataC

i want to use split function to put this into an array...

if i do the following i get an error...here's my code

open (OBFILE, 'outbound.txt');
open (OBout, '>outbound_output.txt');

while (<OBFILE>) {
  chomp;
  $re = 'chr(9)';
  @array= split(/$re/,$_);
  #print OBout "$date\t$time\t$ani\t$entid\n";
  print "@array\n";

}

close(OBFILE);
close(OBout);
[download]

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Re: split() help by GrandFather (Saint) on Jan 24, 2008 at 00:30 UTC
'(' and ')' are magic characters in a regex so need to be quoted if you want a literal match for them. One way to do it is use the quote meta sequence. Consider: `use strict; use warnings; my $data = <<DATA; DataAchr(9)DataBchr(9)DataC DATA open my $infile, '<', \$data; while (<$infile>) { chomp; my $re = 'chr(9)'; my @array= split(/\Q$re\E/,$_); print "@array\n"; } close $infile;` [download] Prints: `DataA DataB DataC` [download] Perl is environmentally friendly - it saves trees	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: split() help by runrig (Abbot) on Jan 24, 2008 at 00:17 UTC
Check the status of the file opens....always `open(....) or die "Couldn't open file: $!"` or something similar. Update: (after listening to CB chatter) Oh. You need to escape the parens in the regex. But you know that now (though you should still check the status of file opens) :-)	[reply] [d/l]
Re: split() help by Anonymous Monk on Jan 24, 2008 at 01:30 UTC
just in case you actually want to `split` on a single character with the value of 9 decimal ( `\t`, a horizontal tab) and not on the six character string indicated in your OP, remove the single-quotes from the `chr(9)` in the assignment, i.e. `$re = chr(9);` and follow suggestions of the other respondents.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: split() help by chrism01 (Friar) on Jan 24, 2008 at 06:11 UTC
If those are real tabs, then split on \t `# split tab $var1="asd zxc ggg"; @arr1=split(/\t/, $var1); print "@arr1\n";` [download] works for me, where those 'spaces' in $var1 are actually tabs. Cheers Chris	[reply] [d/l]