Dateless in Denver...

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

Dear PerlMonks, I have been left without a date. Please help me:

#!/bin/perl

my @keys =(Hi,There);
my %views = (Hi,BYE,There,HERE);
my $mdyt = system("date '+%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S'");
print $mdyt;
foreach my $data (@keys) { print FILE $data.",".$views{$data}.",".$mdy
+t."\n";}
[download]

It displays the date correctly on the screen but I get this in the file:
Hi,BYE,0
There,HERE,0

Dateless in Denver

Comment on Dateless in Denver... Download Code

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Re: Dateless in Denver... by Thelonius (Priest) on Aug 11, 2006 at 16:35 UTC
my $mdyt = `date '+%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S'`; [download] It displays correctly because the date command is outputting it to stdout, not because of "print $mdyt". You could also say (a bit more efficient) `use POSIX; my $mdyt = strftime('+%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S', localtime(time));` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Dateless in Denver... by jwkrahn (Abbot) on Aug 11, 2006 at 22:42 UTC
The `'+'` character is how the date command recognizes the format, POSIX::strftime will just return a literal `'+'` character so: `use POSIX 'strftime'; my $mdyt = strftime '%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S', localtime;` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Dateless in Denver... by jhourcle (Prior) on Aug 11, 2006 at 16:33 UTC
Yep, it prints just fine on the screen. In fact, if you comment out '`print $mdyt`', it prints just fine, too. You're calling 'system', which runs a command, and returns the exit status (0, no failure). It's the call to system which is printing the date to your screen, not the print statement. You want: my $mdyt = `date '+%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S'`; Update: Oh ... and I'm guessing that you've trimmed down the example from your real code, as you never open FILE.	[reply] [d/l] [select]