foreach $line (@array)
        {
        $line =~ s/\s{1}//g;
        }
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You are aliasing $line to the elements of @array; but because you emptied it just before, the loop never executes at all. Even if it did, you would be substituting on the array's elements; but what you want is to do so on the line of input data.

I'll quote from perldoc -f split:

As a special case, specifying a PATTERN of space (' ') will split on white space just as split with no arguments does. Thus, split(' ') can be used to emulate awk's default behavior, whereas split(/ /) will give you as many null initial fields as there are leading spaces. A split on /\s+/ is like a split(' ') except that any leading whitespace produces a null first field.

In other words,
just @array = split (" ", $line);
and you should be fine.
(And it rhymes, too.)

I'd like to mention you should rather move the my @array; into the loop - instead of emptying the array every time over. Variables should be declared as close to where they're used as possible, and restricted to as narrow a scope as feasible.

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use strict;

open (FH, $ARGV[0]) or die "unable to open input file: $!"; # more hel
+pful message
open (OUTFILE, ">$ARGV[1]") or die "unable to open output file: $!"; #
+ this should have one too

while (<FH>){
        chomp;
        my @array = split;

        print OUTFILE "@array\n"; # or whatever has to be done
}
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#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use strict;

while (<>){
        chomp;
        my @array = split;

        print "@array\n"; # or whatever has to be done
}
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Makeshifts last the longest.

thanks Aristotle (and the others!!) - you've been a massive help - much appreciated :-)

my $line =~ s/^\s+//;
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Well, there are some possible points of confusion. Your snippet of code doesn't show what you do with @array after the while loop; that suggest me that you could be reading the file, modifying each line and then throwing away the modified line. Anyway, I'll try to work on the snippet.

On the first iteration, @array contains nothing (since you commented the assignment @array = () ;), so the subsequent foreach won't run, and if $line contains a leading whitespace, it won't catch it.

Your code could be patched by using the peculiarities of split when working on $_, like this

while (<FH>) {
  chomp ;
  @array = split ;
  # do something with @array
}
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while (<FH>) {
  $line = $_ ;
  chomp $line ;
  $line =~ s/^\s// ; # delete leading whitespace, if any
  @array = split /\s+/,$line ;
  # do something with @array; $_ is preserved so you
  # can use it again
}
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That's all I could do with the information you sent ;-). If these solutions don't fit, just ask specifying better.

--bronto

PS: ...and if you need more information on the behaviour of split with no arguments, there is no better source than perldoc -f split;-)

From your code I assume that your columns have more than one space between them, as you say split (/\s+/, $line) - how sure are you of that?

Anyway, I'd do something along the lines of this:

# remove a single whitespace from the start of lines

        foreach $line (@array)
        {
        $line =~ s/^\s//g;
        }
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The ^ matches the beginning of a string or line - else you'd strip out occurences of whitespace where you'll need them for your split. This should do the trick, I think.

Update: Right after having hit stumbit, I realised that wil was quicker than me - wil++.

--cs

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls. - George Carlin

The shortest answer seemed to be:

@array = split;
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