If you really are comparing a string ... then use the string comparison operator:

if ($lineData[18] eq $date) {
[download]

warn "comparing $lineData[18] to $date\n";

if ($lineData[18] eq $date) {
[download]

UPDATE: Here is a little test for you:

no warnings;
print '12/Mar/2004' eq '12/Mar/2004' ? 1 : 0;   should be 1
print '12/Mar/2004' == '12/Mar/2004' ? 1 : 0;   ????

print '31/Mar/2004' eq '12/Mar/2004' ? 1 : 0;   should be 0
print '31/Mar/2004' == '12/Mar/2004' ? 1 : 0;   ????

__END__
1
1
0
1
[download]

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

Your date is delimited with the '/' character, but you're splitting on the comma.

@lineData = split(/\,/, $line); 

should be...

@lineData = split(/\//, $line); #parse 12/Mar/2004

the above results in:
$lineData[0] = 12
$lineData[1] = Mar
$lineData[2] = 2004

This is causing your comparison:

if($lineData[18] == $date) to be wrong
[download]

my $line_date = "$lineData[0]/$lineData[1]/$lineData[2]";
if($line_date eq $date){
  print "equal\n";
}
[download]

I think there may be some misunderstanding... $lineData is the array which has a bunch of data... item 18 is the element that I am instered in... The entry of the date by the user happens in a command prompt...

if ($date eq "$lineData[18]/$lineData[19]/$lineData[20]") ....
[download]

There seems to be some confusion in responders - you are splitting on a comma, because its a comma separated file. So that makes sense. (Assuming there are no commas in the data itself, of course. If thats even a possibility you should use a CSV module from CPAN.)

The code you have shown should use eq. The == comparison is forcing numeric context, taking as much of the string as it can that looks numeric, in this case everything up to the first /.

Compare:

perl -e 'print "==\n" if "12/Mar" == "12/Jun";'
perl -e 'print "eq\n" if "12/Mar" eq "12/Jun";'
[download]

(Which give '==' and no output respectively)

You do say you tried eq, so you may have additional problems. If you post more code you'll get a thorough review. (Perhaps more than you want...)

You may also want to look at the many Date modules on CPAN, so you don't require a specific format.

qq

i think qq is correct here when he says you should try using a CSV module from CPAN.DBD::CSV or DBD::AnyData. With it you could just use a select style query on the file from STDIN. like so ...

use DBD::CSV;

my $input = "test.csv";

my $dbh = DBI->connect(qq{DBI:CSV:});
    $dbh->{'csv_tables'}->{'info'} = { 'file' => "$input",
                                   'eol' => "\n",
                                   'col_names' => ["ID", "date"]};

my $sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT * FROM info WHERE date=?");

print "Enter a date to seach for MM/DD/YYYY: ";
my $date = <STDIN>;
chomp($date);

$sth->execute($date);
my @array;
while(@array = $sth->fetchrow_array){
    print "$array[0], $array[1]\n";
}
[download]

with the test.csv being (example)


1,02/03/2004
2,09/04/1976
3,01/13/1998
4,02/04/2006
5,02/07/2004
6,02/03/2004

which should give you want you want



localhost% ./csv
Enter a date to seach for MM/DD/YYYY: 02/03/2004
1, 02/03/2004
6, 02/03/2004


update:I should pay more attention in examples. I formatted your date incorrectly. It will still work with your format.

If the format of the dates in your text file are consistant, there may be no need to parse the dates in it...

use warnings;
use strict;
use Date::EzDate;

#Date::EzDate can parse several date formats w/o intervention,
#so let's make life easy for end-users by making the input format 
#flexible.
my $date_in = 'Mar 13, 04';
my $date = Date::EzDate->new($date_in)
    or die "Couldn't parse the date '$date_in'.\n";

#convert the date to a string that will match the consistent format
#in our DATA file.  Note that this will only work if the date format 
#in the file is, in fact, consistent.
my $match_date = $date->{'%f/%h/%Y'};

print "Looking for matches on $match_date:\n";
while (<DATA>) {
    #a regex match might work as well as splitting

    #note that there is no need to split the date since we're just
    #matching strings
    print if $match_date eq (split)[2];
}
1;

__DATA__
blah blah 1/Feb/2004 Gamera
blah blah 13/Mar/2004 Godzilla
blah blah 22/Jan/2004 Mothra
blah blah 3/Apr/2004 Baragon
blah blah 13/Feb/2004 Guiron
blah blah 5/Feb/2004 King Ghidorah
blah blah 27/Mar/2004 Legion
blah blah 13/Mar/2004 Mechagodzilla
[download]