String handling frustrations

troll314 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Firstly I is uber newbie @ perl. I'm attempting to write a script that rips out transaction information from a PGP encyrpted email.

Anyway it all works fin except that its handling the string $bob very strangely.

print "$bob 123\n";

This is just a diagnostic line (as is the one before it). However it writes 123 over the contents of $bob. eg if $bob contained "Hello World", it would display "123lo World".

WTF.

Any help would be really appreciated.

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

#while (</var/spool/imap/user/matt/VVSettlements/*.>) {
while (</tmp/42.>) {
        open(F, "cat $_ | pgp +batchmode +force +verbose=0 -f -z \"not
+ much\" 2>/dev/null |");

        while (<F>){
                if (/(BATCH .*)( 199. | 200. )/) {
                        $year = $2;
#                       print "\n\nSTART".$year."END\n\n";
                }
                if (/SALE .*/) {
                        unshift @a, $&;
                }
        }
        $bob = shift @a;
        print "$bob 123\n";           
        print $bob.$year while (defined($bob = shift @a));
}
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Re: String handling frustrations by japhy (Canon) on Jul 31, 2001 at 00:33 UTC
Your string ends in a `\r` (carriage return). Remove it: `$str =~ s/\r$//;`. Or remove all of them: `$str =~ tr/\r//d;`. _____________________________________________________ Jeff `japhy` Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker. `s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;`	[reply]
Re: Re: String handling frustrations by troll314 (Initiate) on Jul 31, 2001 at 00:45 UTC
Thanks. (test) ---------------------- My very owen signature	[reply]
Re: String handling frustrations by ginseng (Pilgrim) on Jul 31, 2001 at 01:01 UTC
Whatever wrote the file in question tacked the carriage return onto the line in question. It didn't have to be a carriage return; it could have been a newline character instead, or both. (I think Windows uses just the carriage return, and UNIX uses both?) At any rate, the end-of-line termination may not always be a carriage return (\r), so removing only that may not be enough. Using the regular expression may not be enough, either, since it deals only with lines (unless you're using a '/m', as in `tr/\r//m`, I believe. I guess I'd probably also `chomp $bob`, which should get rid of the line terminator too. I believe `chomp` only removes the character defined by $/, so the `tr/\s//` is still needed too.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: String handling frustrations by cLive ;-) (Prior) on Jul 31, 2001 at 01:36 UTC
(I think Windows uses just the carriage return, and UNIX uses both?) Close, the other way round though; \r\n - Window$ \n - *nix cLive ;-)	[reply]
Re: Re: String handling frustrations by ChemBoy (Priest) on Jul 31, 2001 at 03:06 UTC
And, for completeness: \r - MacOS This is not a portability issue for scripts (MacPerl Does What You Mean when you `print "\n"`), but it is for the files containing them. :-) If God had meant us to fly, he would never have given us the railroads. --Michael Flanders	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: String handling frustrations by troll314 (Initiate) on Jul 31, 2001 at 01:25 UTC
interesting.. though jaffy's method works in my case and since pgp is not changing its fine. the other thing I could have done I think, would have been to just not include the \r in the first place. this is my line /SALE .*/ I would need to modify it so that it goes to the end of the line but doesn't include \r. Except I dunno how to do that. :P ---------------------- My very owen signature	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: String handling frustrations by ginseng (Pilgrim) on Jul 31, 2001 at 01:36 UTC
I'm all in favor of sticking with what works, but you may want to check out Ovid's Death to Dot Star. I think it will give you alternatives to your regex, including how to modify to the end of the line.	[reply]