String assignment oddity

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

I have some code I'm working with which had the assignment of a base PDF file in a giant 'if elsif' block. It was assigning a different base PDF for form filling using CAM::PDF based on what kind of form it was, and what state we were using. Let's say they were contracts, of two types, and there were two states, so the block went something like this:

if ($type eq 'A'){
    if ($state eq 'GA'){
         $form{source} = 'files/blanks/state/GA/A/contract.pdf';
    }elsif($state eq 'TX'){
         $form{source} = 'files/blanks/state/TX/A/contract.pdf';
    }
elsif ($type eq 'B'){
    if ($state eq 'GA'){
         $form{source} = 'files/blanks/state/GA/B/contract.pdf';
    }elsif($state eq 'TX'){
         $form{source} = 'files/blanks/state/TX/B/contract.pdf';
    }
}
[download]

This worked flawlessly, but it could be more elegant. I wanted this:

$form{source} = "files/blanks/state/$state/$type/contract.pdf";
[download]

I'm printing out the $form{source} value in a log, but if I reassign the value with the latter statement, though it looks identical to me in the log, the file doesn't open correctly. I have traced this through to line 384 in CAM::PDF (PDF.pm) where it tests for $self->_startdoc(). Even though the content loaded is identical, $self->_startdoc() returns undef if I assign the source via the simple assignment method and 1 if it was via the if/else method.

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Re: String assignment oddity by syphilis (Archbishop) on Mar 01, 2018 at 22:28 UTC
$form{source} = "files/blanks/state/$state/$type/contract.pdf"; Are you sure you haven't coded it as: `$form{source} = 'files/blanks/state/$state/$type/contract.pdf';` [download] That would explain the failure. Cheers, Rob	[reply] [d/l]
Re: String assignment oddity by Eily (Monsignor) on Mar 02, 2018 at 14:44 UTC
Well I don't see anything in your code that would explain how $form{source} would look the same but give a different result. I do see that there is no "else", are you sure that you never fall in those cases? You could add `else { die "This shouldn't happen" }` just to be 100% sure. Also rather than print the values, you can use Data::Dump (or Data::Dumper with $Data::Dumper::Useqq) to see exactly what is in the string (eg: make invisible chars explicit). You can also let perl itself check if the two strings are identical, with the ^ to show exactly where the difference is: `my $form_source = "files/blanks/state/$state/$type/contract.pdf"; die pp $form_source ^ $form{source} unless $form_source eq $form{sourc +e}; # pp from Data::Dump` [download] If all of this fails, you'll have to show more code.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: String assignment oddity by writch (Sexton) on Apr 17, 2018 at 15:19 UTC
Ok, I have found the fix. I'm not sure I understand what is going on under the hood, but the fix is to use the Encode library and instead of assigning it directly as such: $x = "files/$state/$type/thing.pdf" I use the results of encode to assign it instead: $x = encode('UTF-8', "files/$state/$type/thing.pdf", Encode::FB_CROAK); Tracing through the CAM::PDF code showed the data in the success path was looking like straight hex (AFDDECBB), while in the failure path it was showing as such: (\x{af}\x{dd}\x{ec}\x{bb}). Humans can't see any difference between $x, but perl sees something really different.	[reply]