If your input always follows a particular format, I often find it is useful to write a simple line-parsing sub that returns the correct info (if it exists in the line) and handles any lines that don't conform to the format.
If you use a regex to match the format rather than splitting, i generally don't find it is that much slower, especially if you precomile the regex (/o modifier), and it gives you the peace of mind that you don't get errors like this.

sub parse_format{
  my $line = shift;
  my ($date, $number,); ## for returning
  while ($line =~ m/^ #linestart
                    (\d+\/\d+\/\d+\s+\d+) # capture date and first num
+ber
                     \,\s+ #junk in the middle
                     (\d+) # capture the last bit
                     $ # end of string
                   /ox )
  {
    ($date,$number,) = ($1, $2,);
  } else {
    warn "\'$line\' did not conform to format. Skipping...\n";
  }
  return ($date, $number,);
}

[download]

Or something... I haven't tested this, *just as an example*!!

Just a something something...

In reply to Re^3: stripping whitespace gives an 'unitialized value' error by BioLion
in thread stripping whitespace gives an 'unitialized value' error by stevemayes

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