DB Question

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

Hello, I have a question that I hope that you good people can help me with. In my script I am pulling a list of categories from a data file for use in a flat db file.

     open(FILE, "$catdir/categories.dat") || &error_message("Can't fin
+d data file - $catdir/categories.dat.");
     @list = <FILE>;
     close(FILE);
    @list= sort(@list);

     $numlist = @list;
     print "<select size=1 name='catlisting'>";
     for ($a = 0; $a < $numlist; $a ++)
             {
             ($one, $nochop) = split(/\|/, $list[$a]);
             print "<option value='$one'>$one</option>";
             }
 print "</select>";
 close(FILE);
[download]

Dat File:

Categories
Accounting
Attorneys
Automobile-Sales
Automobile-Services
Banks
[download]

Everything works fine until it gets added to the flat data file. Anything following the "catlisting" get sent to the next line. Any suggestions? thanks, lis

Comment on DB Question Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: DB Question by FamousLongAgo (Friar) on Nov 11, 2002 at 15:29 UTC
I'm not clear about your question -- where are things getting added to the flat data file? And what do you mean by "sent to the next line"? That said, here's a cleanup of the code you posted: `open FILE, "$catdir/categories.dat" or error_message( "Can't find data file: $catdir/categories.dat" ); @list = <FILE>; close FILE; chomp @list; #remove newlines print "<select size=\"1\" name=\"catlisting\>\n"; foreach my $element ( sort @list ) { print "<option value=\"$element\">$element</option>\n"; } print "</select>";` [download] I replaced the loop with a more natural foreach loop, removed the duplicate "close" statement, and removed the mystery split statement ( which does nothing, based on your data file provided ).	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: DB Question by kshay (Beadle) on Nov 11, 2002 at 15:32 UTC
You also replaced the incorrect single quotes in the HTML tags with the correct double quotes, which was going to be my suggestion... --Kevin	[reply]
Re: Re: DB Question by lisaw (Beadle) on Nov 11, 2002 at 16:47 UTC
Thank you very much!! That did the trick!	[reply]
Re: DB Question by tadman (Prior) on Nov 11, 2002 at 15:32 UTC
Just a quick note about reading from files. You can iterate through the array directly without the need for a separate looping and counter variable: `foreach (sort @list) { my ($one, $nochop) = split(/\\|/, $_); chomp($one); # Remove any trailing linefeeds print "<option value='$one'>$one</option>"; }` [download] I'm not sure what your $nochop variable is for, since it doesn't seem to be utilized. Further, you're closing FILE twice, which is irregular considering the first is sufficient. I'd also like to throw in my obligatory nitpick about using ampersands in function calls. The first line could be sufficiently written as: `unless (open(FILE, "$catdir/categories.dat")) { error_message("Can't find data file - $catdir/categories.dat"); }` [download] Usually, I would put a return call in the `unless` block because there's little point in displaying a page if there's no data to put in it.	[reply] [d/l] [select]