Hello!

I have a text file which contains repeating entries as follows:

A: A_value
B: B_value
C: C_value

A: A_value
B: B_value
C: C_value
[download]

My objective is to extract the values and store them to variables to later save into an array of hashes.

My current code is as follows:

my @data = readOnly( "Data.txt" );
my $i = 0; my $index = 0;
my $a; my $b; my $c;

while( $i < @data )
{
    if( $data[$i] =~ /A:/ )
    {
        ( , $a) = split( /: /, $data[$i++] );
        ( , $b) = split( /: /, $data[$i++] );
        ( , $c) = split( /: /, $data[$i++] );

        if( exists $baseline{$a} )
        {
            $hash[$index++] = {
                                a => $a,
                                b => $b,
                                c => $c,
                              };
        }
    }
}
[download]

I've tried declaring the variables $a, $b and $c at the time of assignment as opposed to at the start of the sub and I've tried using a $garbage variable to store the first token of each split (although I don't need it).

I've gotten a variety of errors depending on how I set the code up, but ultimately Perl keeps telling me that $a is uninitialized when I use it in the check for existence.

Insight on why I'm having this issue and guidance on how to code this correctly would be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks!