nala45 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have a large file with data seperated by |. I want to split the document at each | only. Its giving me error when i have a blank field such as "|abcxyz||fiuhs|" and also it is giving me error when it encounters a parantheses eg: "|adbd(cjh) | hjjds|" All i want is the split function to only split at |. Can somebody help me with this command. I really appreciate it.

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Re: Split function
by Adam (Vicar) on Feb 08, 2001 at 00:57 UTC
    Without the benefit of your code, I can't really tell you where you went wrong. 
    use strict;
my $file;
{
  local $/;
  $file = <>;
}
$file =~ s!$/!!g;
my @elements = split /\|/, $file;

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    above code is untested

    Update
    By the way, there is more info about split in the library. I just noticed this was your first post, and that no one pointed you there, so I thought I would mention it as a reference.

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Re: Split function
by kschwab (Vicar) on Feb 08, 2001 at 01:00 UTC
    You would have to post some sample code and the specific error text. "Its giving me error" doesn't really say much.

    Just for grins:

    #!/usr/bin/perl
my $foo="|abcxyz||fiuhs|";
for (split(/\|/,$foo)) {
   print "field is [$_]\n";
}

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    Creates this output:

    field is []
field is [abcxyz]
field is []
field is [fiuhs]

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    Which seems reasonable to me...

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Re: Split function
by lemming (Priest) on Feb 08, 2001 at 00:59 UTC 
    @turkey = split(/\|/, $stuffing);

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    The | is backslashed so that | isn't termed as an or condition. That splits each string ($stuffing) and places it into an array @turkey.
    Update:
    Hmm. If you want to throw away "blank" values. 
    @turkey = split(/\|+/, $stuffing);

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    Update for MeowChow: Well, you need to do some mixing and chopping, but I find the chop() function cuts too thin and the consistancy winds up too soft. I prefer some chunks.

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      You can make a turkey by splitting stuffing? The things you learn here... :-)
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