Padding with zeroes fails

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

Can anyone tell me why this doesn't work? I'm a bit lost.

use strict;
use diagnostics;

# ScheduleA has the format of:
# ,,,,,,,MultiPlex MP-7 Plan.pdf.sit
# ,,,,,,,MultiPlex S2.1 Main Plan.S.sit. . .
# ,,,,,,,MultiPlex S2.2 Upper PlanS.sit. . .
# ,,,,,,,MultiPlex S2.3 Roof Plan.S.sit. . .
# 1/24/2000,906,907,Johnston Sport Architecture Inc.,Lorne Mack
# 1/21/2000,908,908,Johnston Sport Architecture Inc.,Lorne Mack
# 1/19/2000,909,911,Johnston Sport Architecture Inc.,Lorne Mack
# ,,,,,,,Whitehorse FTP Memo.pdf
# ,,,,,,,1122 Whitehorse FTP 6.0/95


open (CSVFILE, "<schedulea.csv") or die "Can't open schedulea.csv";

while (<CSVFILE>) {
    if ($_ =~ /(^.*?),(\d+),(\d+),(.*?$)/) {
        $2 =~ ('0' x (6 - length($2))) . $2;
        $3 =~ ('0' x (6 - length($3))) . $3;
        print "$1,$2,$3,$4\n";
    }
    else {
        print $_;
    }
}
[download]

Thanks!

Kickstart

Comment on Padding with zeroes fails Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
(Ovid) Re: Padding with zeroes fails by Ovid (Cardinal) on Dec 06, 2001 at 00:35 UTC
You really shouldn't try to parse CSV data by hand. Having a quoted field with an embedded comma will quickly make your life miserable. If you create a regex which will accurately parse CSV data, then it's going to be less than pleasant to maintain. Try something like Text::CSV_XS: `use strict; use Text::CSV_XS; my $csv = Text::CSV->new; my $csv_file = 'schedulea.csv'; open CSVFILE, "< $csv_file" or die "Can't open $csv_file for reading: +$!"; while (<CSVFILE>) { my $status = $csv->parse($_); if ( $status ) { my @columns = $csv->fields(); # do stuff with columns } else { my $bad_argument = $csv->error_input(); # do stuff with the error } }` [download] Cheers, Ovid Join the Perlmonks Setiathome Group or just click on the the link and check out our stats.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Padding with zeroes fails by miyagawa (Chaplain) on Dec 06, 2001 at 00:25 UTC
You don't need `=~` here. just use `=` instead. And consider using sprintf also. -- Tatsuhiko Miyagawa miyagawa@cpan.org	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: Padding with zeroes fails by Kickstart (Pilgrim) on Dec 06, 2001 at 00:59 UTC
Thanks, that was definitely the first error...the second came up when I attempted to assign other values to the read-only variables ($2 and $3)...both fixed, worked like a charm. Unfortunately this is just a one-of, so I didn't want to write a big multi-use script. Kickstart	[reply]