Are you building complex strings?

You may have an unmatched string, like starting with a double quote and ending what you think is the same string with a single quote.

Possibly, but usually an unmatched single quote gives rise to the confusing:

       
      Bad name after %s::
[download]

message with 5.6.1

/J\

Check for these three things:

There must be no space after the << part.

There (probably) should be a semicolon at the end.

You can't (easily) have any space in front of the tag
[download]

use strict;
use warnings;

use vars qw($home_fax $Company $position $company_address1 $company_po
+stal1  $company_phone $company_fax);

$home_fax = "a";
$Company = "b";
$position = "c";
$company_address1 = "d";
$company_postal1 = "e";
$company_phone = "f";
$company_fax = "g";

section2();

sub section2 
{
print <<"ENDHTML";
 one
ENDHTML

unless ($home_fax eq "")
{
print <<"ENDHTML"; 
    two
ENDHTML
}        

print <<"ENDHTML";
    three
ENDHTML

unless ($Company eq "")
{
print <<"ENDHTML"; 
    four
ENDHTML
} 

unless ($position eq "")
{
print <<"ENDHTML";
    five
ENDHTML
} 

unless ($company_address1 eq "")
{
print <<"ENDHTML";
    six
ENDHTML
} 

unless ($company_postal1 eq "")
{
print <<"ENDHTML";        
    seven
ENDHTML
} 

unless ($company_phone eq "")
{
print <<"ENDHTML";        
    eight
ENDHTML
} 

unless ($company_fax eq "")
{
print <<"ENDHTML";        
    nine
ENDHTML
}

print <<"ENDHTML";
    ten
ENDHTML
}
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C:\WINNT\PROFILES\simonp\DESKTOP>perl test.pl
 one
        two
        three
        four
        five
        six
        seven
        eight
        nine
        ten

C:\WINNT\PROFILES\simonp\DESKTOP>
[download]

Here is the code, I decided to take the Html out to make it less unwieldly...


sub section2 
{
print <<ENDHTML;
# Html goes in here
ENDHTML       

unless ($home_fax eq ""){
print <<ENDHTML; 
# Html goes in here
ENDHTML
}        

print <<ENDHTML;
# Html goes in here
ENDHTML

unless ($Company eq "")
{
print <<ENDHTML; 
# Html goes in here
ENDHTML        
} 

unless ($position eq "")
{
print <<ENDHTML;
# Html goes in here
ENDHTML
} 


unless ($company_address1 eq "")
{
print <<ENDHTML;
# Html goes in here
ENDHTML
} 

unless ($company_postal1 eq ""){
print <<ENDHTML;        
# Html goes in here
ENDHTML
} 

unless ($company_phone eq "")
{
print <<ENDHTML;        
# Html goes in here
ENDHTML
} 

unless ($company_fax eq "")
{
print <<ENDHTML;        
# Html goes in here
ENDHTML
}

print <<ENDHTML;
# Html goes in here
ENDHTML
}
[download]

Cheers, Gerard.

Kill the spaces after each ending tag ENDHTML, because after ENDHTML there must immediately follow a \n; otherwise it is not interpreted as the end of a HERE-Document and an error like this occurs...

Best regards,
perl -le "s==*F=e=>y~\*martinF~stronat~=>s~[^\w]~~g=>chop,print"

I know I am not addressing your question, but why use unless when you are checking for truth values?

I'd rather use if:

if ($company_fax) {
....
}
[download]

instead of:

unless ($company_fax eq "")
....
}
[download]

/prakash

I know its like shutting the stable door and everything but perhaps you ought to be using an editor like vim that lets you match the brackets

/J\

I'm not sure from the preceeding replies that you have solved the problem . . .but even if you have this is good to keep in mind.

I once stared at this subroutine for *5* hours trying to figure out where the missing curlie was . . .and eventually I found it. My problem? A missing curlie several hundred lines before - because my subs are generally at the end of a file, perl managed to parse the whole thing not finding the "missing curlie" error until the last couple of lines. Using the debugger would have helped had I known at the time how to use it. But keep in mind that, like run away lines and strings, missing curlies often creat errors at a distance - far more distance than any other error I've encountered.

Yikes. 5 hours! In the interest of saving you the hassle next time, might I recommend perltidy? The perltidy documentation shows how it helps find mis-matched braces at: An example of finding a nesting error (here it is in googles cache since the above link isn't working for me at the moment.)

-Blake

Thanks all for your comments. I manageed to solve it in the end, by removing my sloppy, trailing spaces. Erik, I did already think of that, I ran the subroutine as seperate file altogether and got the same error, which is how I knew it was in there. Thanks anyway.

Regards,
Gerard.