newbie attempting to extract

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

Hi All,

I'm new to Perl, and to PM so gentle guidance is welcome! Having said that I do have many years on computers.

I am attepting to write a Perl script to retrieve an email from a pop3 mailserver. The email contains only one line of text that is comprised of 6 tab delimited data fields so I need to parse the 6 data values to a mysql data base. I've been able to connect to the server and download the email, and I know enough mysql to make that work .... but I can't do the simplest part in the middle, which is extract the 6 individual data values from the text! I'm willing to work at it, have googled and have good books, but still cna not figure out how to use regexp search and then assign variable names to the data values. Initially I'm just trying to print the variables to see if I got them.

Thanks for all suggestions.

Jim

=================
data file

1234567890123456 2004-07-10 14:47:39 51.12345 -1.12345
[download]

=================

my latest failing perl script!

#!/usr/bin/perl

open (INPUT, "< data")
     or die "Couldn't open data file for reading: $!\n";

while (<INPUT>) {
$firstvalue =~ /(\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d\d)/;  # match first 16
+ digit value
      print $firstvalue #"This is the first parameter.\n";

}


close (INPUT);
[download]

text

jamaas btinternet com

_{janitored by ybiC: Balanced <code> tags around codeblock, as per Monastery convention.}

Comment on newbie attempting to extract Select or Download Code

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Re: newbie attempting to extract by Velaki (Chaplain) on Oct 03, 2004 at 07:17 UTC
I believe that you are looking for the split function. `#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; while(<DATA>) { my @a = split; # split record into fields print "Value = $_\n" for @a; # print out all fields print "\n"; # blank line between "records" } __DATA__ 1234567890123456 2004-07-10 14:47:39 51.12345 -1.12345` [download] That will produce `Value = 1234567890123456 Value = 2004-07-10 Value = 14:47:39 Value = 51.12345 Value = -1.12345` [download] Hope that helped, -v "Perl. There is no substitute."	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: newbie attempting to extract by jamaas (Novice) on Oct 03, 2004 at 07:30 UTC
It helped a whole bunch!! And so elegant. OK, next challenge! Thanks and Regards Jim jamaas btinternet com	[reply]
Re^2: newbie attempting to extract by jamaas (Novice) on Oct 03, 2004 at 15:11 UTC
Thanks Velaki, Obviously this works beautifully. I've tried reading the perldoc info on split.... and tried to put in an incrementing loop to give the values unique names such that these can then be passed to php code for insertion into mysql. It appears that split does all this in one pass so incrementing a loop counter doesn't work. Can this @_array be used to directly insert into mysql table? Thanks a bunch Jim jamaas btinternet com	[reply]
Re^3: newbie attempting to extract by Prior Nacre V (Hermit) on Oct 04, 2004 at 01:15 UTC
This provides a unique value for each data item. It combines a row ID (`$.`) and a field ID (`$i`). `# data_read use strict; use warnings; while (<DATA>) { chomp; my @data = split; for (my $i = 0; $i <= $#data; ++$i) { print "$._$i = $data[$i]\n"; } } __DATA__ qwerty qwerty qwerty asdf zxcv 1234 qwerty qwerty qwerty asdf zxcv` [download] Here's the output: `[ ~/tmp ] $ perl data_read 1_0 = qwerty 1_1 = qwerty 1_2 = qwerty 1_3 = asdf 1_4 = zxcv 1_5 = 1234 2_0 = qwerty 2_1 = qwerty 2_2 = qwerty 2_3 = asdf 2_4 = zxcv [ ~/tmp ] $` [download] Here's a perl.com article which describes `$.` and other special variables. Regards, PN5	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: newbie attempting to extract by CountZero (Bishop) on Oct 03, 2004 at 12:09 UTC
Also have a look at the Text::CSV_XS or Text::CSV modules. They also deal with (un)quoting "forbidden" characters in your CSV-records. CountZero "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law	[reply]
Re: newbie attempting to extract by Cody Pendant (Prior) on Oct 04, 2004 at 05:46 UTC
If I understand the question right, the simplest solution to it is surely just this kind of syntax: `$str = 'one two three'; ($x,$y,$z) = split(' ',$str); print "my three variables are $x, $y and $z";` [download] as in, it directly splits up the string into variable names of your choosing? Maybe I've missed something, as nobody's posted about that method yet? ($_='kkvvttuubbooppuuiiffssqqffssmmiibbddllffss') =~y~b-v~a-z~s; print	[reply] [d/l]