HELP!!! Can't modify constant item in addition (+) at .....

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

Hi, I have been receiving this error and I do not see what is wrong. Can't modify constant item in addition (+) at Y:\Perl2\GSI.pl line 216, near "}" Execution of Y:\Perl2\GSI.pl aborted due to compilation errors. This is my code:

my ($alarmed,$flawed,$inspected);
    
    open (FILE2, "<$path2") or die "Cannot open $path2";
    $record2 = <FILE2>; #skip first line
    while ($record2 = <FILE2>){
            my @temporary = split(",",$record2);
            if ($temporary[4] eq "alarmed")
            {
                alarmed += $temporary[5] ### ERROR LINE ###
                #print "$temporary[5]\n";
            }
    }
    close(FILE2);
[download]

I do not see why as I did not declare 'alarmed' as a constant. Any help is very much appreciated. Thanks you!

Comment on HELP!!! Can't modify constant item in addition (+) at ..... Download Code

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Re: HELP!!! Can't modify constant item in addition (+) at ..... by jdporter (Paladin) on Apr 04, 2005 at 09:30 UTC
Um... You're missing the dollar sign in front of that `alarmed`. I.e. `$alarmed` You might also want to put a semicolon at the end of that statement, in case you ever need to uncomment the following print statement. :-)	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: HELP!!! Can't modify constant item in addition (+) at ..... by gellyfish (Monsignor) on Apr 04, 2005 at 09:32 UTC
Er, you missed off the sigil off `$alarmed`. `use strict` would have indicated this typo at compile time. /J\<?p>	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: HELP!!! Can't modify constant item in addition (+) at ..... by Zaxo (Archbishop) on Apr 04, 2005 at 09:33 UTC
The 'alarmed' you're modifying needs a sigil. You're trying to add to the constant 'alarmed'. `use strict;` would have caught that. `$alarmed += $temporary[5] ### ERROR LINE ### # ^` [download] After Compline, Zaxo	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: HELP!!! Can't modify constant item in addition (+) at ..... by ysth (Canon) on Apr 04, 2005 at 10:30 UTC
alarmed there is what's called a bareword: since alarmed isn't a built-in function of perl or a function you've declared, it is treated as a string constant "alarmed". And trying to add to a constant gives you a Can't modify constant error. (Using strict turns use of a bareword into a fatal error, but in this case the Can't modify constant error is given first anyway.)	[reply]