if ($search == $author) {
[download]

  if ($search eq $author) {
[download]

Also, you might want to consider a different delimiter character than ":". The colon appears in many book titles, so what will happen when you eventually encounter one?

Here is another way to do it:

use strict;

my (@info, $found);
my $totalprice = 0;
print "\n\nAuthor to search for: ";
chomp (my $search = <STDIN>);
print "\n\n";
while (<DATA>){
   chomp $_;
   my ($title, $author, $genre, $price) = split ":";
   if (lc $search eq lc $author) {
      $totalprice += $price;
      push @info, $_;
      $found++;
   }
}
if ($found) {
   print "\n\nNumber of matching books by $search: ", $found, "\n\n";
   print pack('A40 A20 A7','Title','Genre', 'Price'),"\n";
   print '-' x 39, ' ', '-' x 19, ' ', '-' x 7, "\n";
   foreach (@info) {
      my ($title, $author, $genre, $price) = split ":";
      print pack("A40 A20 A7", $title, $genre, $price), "\n";
   }
   print "\n\tTotal price of matching book(s): $totalprice\n";
} else {
   print "\nNo matching books for author: $search\n\n";
}
__DATA__
Taliesin:Lawhead:Celtic Novel: 8.99
History of the 20th Century:Sage:History:27.99
The Twilight of Courage:Thoene:Historical Novel:15.99
Historical Perspectives:Lawhead:History:35.00
[download]

Author to search for: lawhead


Number of matching books by lawhead: 2

Title                                   Genre               Price
--------------------------------------- ------------------- -------
Taliesin                                Celtic Novel         8.99
Historical Perspectives                 History             35.00

        Total price of matching book(s): 43.99
[download]

--Jim

Thanks a lot everyone! The info you all gave will help a ton! Sorry bout the whole -w/use strict thing....first post here. I'm very new to the Perl syntax but I'm starting to get a better grasp everyday.

--psychoto



It is the Mind,
That is the Mind,
Confusing the Mind.
Do not Mind, Oh mind,
to the Mind.

---Miyamoto Musashi

Without actually running your script I would suggest that it will only return the last item found, and the total number and price of all items found. This is because each iteration of your while loop wipes out the previous entry. The simplest way to get around this would be to print out your info on each iteration rather than at the very end. Alternatively, you might want to use a hash (or array) of arrays (see perlman:perlref for a discussion of references, should you need it).

Other than that, I second the suggestion to use strict and warnings :-)

HTH, Tim

Maybe this works, although somehow you didn't tell what your problem is...

#!perl -w
use strict;

print "Author to search for:";
my $search = <STDIN>; chomp($search);

my $totalprice = 0;
my $found = 0;
my @info = ();
my ($title, $autor, $genre, $price);

open (INPUT, "books.txt") or die "Error: $!"; # always check for error
+s
while (<INPUT>){
  chomp $_;
  ($title, $autor, $genre, $price) = split (/:/,$_);
  if ($search eq $autor) { # eq for stringcompare, == for numerical
    $totalprice += $price;
    push (@info, [ $title, $genre, $price]);
    $found++;
  }
}
print "$found books by $autor were found...\n";
print "They are:\n";
print "\tBook Title\t\t\tGenre\tPrice";
foreach my $info (@info){
  print join("\t", @$info), "\n";
}
print "\tTotal price of these books by $search is   $totalprice";
close INPUT;
[download]

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

A few of things. You have a typo ($totalpriece) which leaves $totalprice undefined, $author is not scoped outside the while, and $seach is a typo.

I didn't actually look to see if the code worked. It's sort of pointless to add use strict and -w if you don't try to run it. The disclaimer "This code was not tested" would have been better than Maybe this works . . . .

--Jim

Hi

I just looked this one up in man perlopentut:


 
A few things to notice.  First, the leading less-than is
optional.  If omitted, Perl assumes that you want to open
the file for reading.