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

I am making a PDF , which using PDF::Table I am making a table inside that PDF. What I am trying to do is make the table dynamic, cause I am passing variables and I do not want a blank table row if the variable is empty. This is what I have tried so far: 

my $some_data =[

    ["HP Hardware", "Total Cost"],

    [$hardware1, $hardwareValue1],

            [$hardware2, $hardwareValue2],

            [$hardware3, $hardwareValue3],

            [$hardware4, $hardwareValue4],

            [$hardware5, $hardwareValue5],

            [$hardware6, $hardwareValue6],

            [$hardware7, $hardwareValue7],

            [$hardware8, $hardwareValue8],

            [$hardware9, $hardwareValue9],

            [$hardware10, $hardwareValue10],

            [$hardware11, $hardwareValue11],

            [$hardware12, $hardwareValue12],

            [$hardware13, $hardwareValue13],

            [$hardware14, $hardwareValue14],

            [$hardware15, $hardwareValue15],

 ];

 

for (my $i=0; $i< scalar($some_data); $i++) {

 

            if ($hardware[$i] eq "") {

                        

            }

 

}

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I am thinking if the variable is blank I want to delete the row from $some_data, I don't know the syntax to do it, I also Tried 

 my @tableData = $some_data;

for (my $i=0; $i< scalar(@tableData); $i++) {

    my @row = $tableData[$i];
    for ( my $j=0; $j< scalar(@row) ;$j++) {
        my $cell = $row[$j];

        if (($cell eq "") || ($cell eq " ")) {

            splice(@tableData, @row, @row)
        }
    }

}

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Any help or suggestions would be helpful, thanks Ben

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Creating a Dynamic Table
by almut (Canon) on Jan 10, 2007 at 17:00 UTC

    I think it's probably easier to just use grep to filter the list while copying it... Something like: 

    my @tableData =
    grep ref($_) eq "ARRAY" &&   # make sure we have an arrayref
         $_->[0] =~ /\S/    &&   # first  cell non-empty
         $_->[1] =~ /\S/,        # second cell non-empty
    (
        ["Hardware A", "Total Cost A"],
        ["Hardware B", "Total Cost B"],
        ["Hardware C", ""],
        ["",           "Total Cost D"],
        [" ",          "Total Cost E"],
        ["Hardware F", " "],
        [" ",          ""],
        ["Hardware H", "Total Cost H"],
    );

# to print out
use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper \@tableData;

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    (The literal strings I put in above can of course also be variables...)

    Or, if you wanted to use $some_data, as you declared it, it would look like 

    my @tableData =
    grep ref($_) eq "ARRAY" &&   # make sure we have an arrayref
         $_->[0] =~ /\S/    &&   # first  cell non-empty
         $_->[1] =~ /\S/,        # second cell non-empty
    @$some_data;

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Re: Creating a Dynamic Table
by ikkon (Monk) on Jan 10, 2007 at 18:03 UTC
    thanks for your help, I fix it by using the following code 
    my @tableData = (
    ["HP Hardware", "Total Cost"],
); 
for my $i ( 1 .. 15 ) {

     my $hardware_name = param('HW_' . $i . '_0');
     my $hardware_val = param('HW_' . $i . '_1');
    if ( $hardware_name and $hardware_val =~ /\w/ ) {        
     push @tableData, [ $hardware_name, $hardware_val ];
     push @tableData, [ "Total hardware cost:", $TotalHWValue];
   }     # if hardware_name
}        # foreach i

my  $some_data = \@tableData;

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    thanks again for your help
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Re: Creating a Dynamic Table
by bobf (Monsignor) on Jan 11, 2007 at 06:24 UTC

    While it does not directly answer your question, I wanted to comment on style. In general, using variable names like this: 

    [$hardware1, $hardwareValue1],
[$hardware2, $hardwareValue2],
[$hardware3, $hardwareValue3],

    [download]
    is a bad idea. See Why it's stupid to use a variable as as a variable name for more information.

    You can use arrays, hashes, or some combination thereof to accomplish the same thing, and your data structures will be much more robust. For example: 

    # array
my @hardware;
$hardware[1] = 'whatever';

# hash
my %hardware;
$hardware{1} = 'whatever';

# hash of hashes
my %hardware;
$hardware{1} = { hw => 'whatever', value => 'somevalue' };

# hash of arrays
my %hardware;
$hardware{1} = [ 'whatever', 'somevalue' ];

# array of arrays
my @hardware;
$hardware[1] = [ 'whatever', 'somevalue' ];

# array of hashes
my @hardware;
$hardware[1] = { hw => 'whatever', value => 'somevalue' };

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    See perldsc for more information on complex data structures.

    HTH

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      that is a very good point thanks for bringing that to my attention, I will have to change that, thanks again
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