Parsing a comma delimited file

Skyler99 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have worked with this program to parse a text file. It does what it is suppose to do. it replaces (,) commas with (|) pipes. However it gives me a warning message at the begining "Unrecognized escape \d passed through at "Filename.pl" line 5" I tried to debug this program but I haven't gotten any where. here is my code :

I'll appreciate any help. Please write to -->edge99off@hotmail.com

#! perl -w

use strict;

open(IN, "<c:\doclist.chr") or die "Couldn't open file, $!";
open(OUT, ">c:\doclist.txt") or die "Couldn't open file, $!";

while(<IN>) 
{
   chomp;  # Remove the newline
   my ($var1, $var2, $var3, $var4, $var5, $var6, $var7) = split /,/;
   print OUT $var1,"|",$var2,"|",$var3,"|",$var4,"|",$var5,"|",$var6,"
+|",$var7,"\n";
}
exit;

close IN
close OUT
[download]

update (broquaint): added formatting

Comment on Parsing a comma delimited file Download Code

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Re: Parsing a comma delimited file by broquaint (Abbot) on Feb 13, 2003 at 14:07 UTC
However it gives me a warning message at the begining That would be the filenames in you `open` calls. You need to use single quotes instead as the backslash is trying to escape the 'd' following it which is not what you want e.g `open(IN, '<c:\doclist.chr') or die "Couldn't open file, $!"; open(OUT, '>c:\doclist.txt') or die "Couldn't open file, $!";` [download] Also can I suggest a simplification to your while loop `print OUT join '\|', split /,/ while <IN>;` [download] Now you're not limited to seven fields (although you can enforce this using the 3rd argument of `split`) and you've done it all on a single line, hurrah! HTH `_________ broquaint`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: Parsing a comma delimited file by Skyler99 (Novice) on Feb 13, 2003 at 15:15 UTC
Thanks for the info ... the program works like a charm!	[reply]
Re: Parsing a comma delimited file by tachyon (Chancellor) on Feb 13, 2003 at 14:44 UTC
Of course you can do it in a one liner too `perl -pi.bak -e 's/,/\|/g' <file>` [download] cheers tachyon s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Parsing a comma delimited file by busunsl (Vicar) on Feb 13, 2003 at 14:06 UTC
`open(IN, "<c:\doclist.chr") or die "Couldn't open file, $!"; open(OUT, ">c:\doclist.txt") or die "Couldn't open file, $!";` [download] When specifying pathnames use forward slashes '/' not backslashes '\', even on windows machines. Perl will handle this for you.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Parsing a comma delimited file by bart (Canon) on Feb 13, 2003 at 14:36 UTC
Either double your backslashes in your string containing the path, or use a forward slash instead. A single backslash in a double-quotish string usually means something other than a literal backslash. And if your records aren't that trivial, in that they may be quoted and contain comma's, perhaps you should be using one of the CSV modules instead.	[reply]
Re: Parsing a comma delimited file by tcf22 (Priest) on Feb 13, 2003 at 17:19 UTC
you can either replace the backslash with 2 backslashes in double quoted strings, use a slash instead of a backslash(even on windows), or put your path in single quotes, as long as the path doesn't contain any variables or special characters(\n, \t, etc.)	[reply]