Beginner's help

negzero7 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi, I am very new to perl and am taking a class on it. I am working on my first project and need some help. My code is this:

#!/usr/bin/env perl
print "Please enter your first name:";
$FIRST = <STDIN>;

print "Please enter your last name:";
$LAST = <STDIN>;

print "Please enter a temperature in Farenheit:";
$F = <STDIN>;

$C = (($F - 32) * 5) / 9;

print "Thank You $FIRST $LAST, $F degrees Farenheit is $C degrees Cels
+ius.\n";
[download]

but it prints out like this:

nova> perl project1.pl
Please enter your first name:neg
Please enter your last name:zero
Please enter a temperature in Farenheit:88
Thank You neg
 zero
, 88
 degrees Farenheit is 31.1111111111111 degrees Celsius.
nova>
[download]

See how it separates the lines in the last section at neg? and at zero? and then again at 88? How do I make it display as a whole sentence? Thanks for any help you can give me.

edit: I have no idea why this came out as a solid block of text, I typed it in nice neat paragraphs with lots of space for easy reading, sorry, I don't know what happened.

20080222 Janitored by Corion: Added formatting, code tags, as per Writeup Formatting Tips

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Re: Beginner's help by kyle (Abbot) on Feb 20, 2008 at 00:33 UTC
The problem is that when you read a value with `<STDIN>`, what you read includes a newline (`"\n"`) at the end. That newline gets printed out when you print the variables, such as `$LAST`, and you get a line break on the screen. Have a look at chomp to help you with this.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Beginner's help by planetscape (Chancellor) on Feb 20, 2008 at 00:32 UTC
What happened was you neglected to follow the link marked: If something looked unlike you expected it to you might need to check out Writeup Formatting Tips ~~Also, it's best to clearly label homework as such.~~ ;-) Update: Nevermind, guess you did. Just very hard to read in there. HTH, planetscape	[reply]
Re: Beginner's help by toolic (Bishop) on Feb 20, 2008 at 00:38 UTC
Surround your code with "code" tags. Add these lines to the top of your script, then declare all variables with my: `use warnings; use strict;` [download] This will help you avoid common Perl coding mistakes.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Beginner's help by Anonymous Monk on Feb 20, 2008 at 02:36 UTC
Thanks for the help, the book I am using to learn pearl said chomp removed new lines, but I didn't realize that it added newlines to all of my <STDIN> tags. I apologize for the formatting, I was getting frustrated with my code and didn't take the time to look up proper formatting in perlmonks, so thanks for the link! This is what I now have: `#!/usr/bin/env perl print "Please enter your first name:"; chomp ($FIRST = <STDIN>); print "Please enter your last name:"; chomp ($LAST = <STDIN>); print "Please enter a temperature in Farenheit:"; chomp ($F = <STDIN>); chomp ($C = (($F - 32) * 5) / 9); print "Thank You $FIRST $LAST, $F degrees Farenheit is $C degrees Cels +ius.\n";` [download] And this is what I got: `nova> perl project1.pl Please enter your first name:neg Please enter your last name:zero Please enter a temperature in Farenheit:90 Thank You neg zero, 90 degrees Farenheit is 32.2222222222222 degrees C +elsius. nova>` [download] It worked great! Thanks for everyone's help!	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: Beginner's help by toolic (Bishop) on Feb 20, 2008 at 03:17 UTC
The chomp in your calculation of `$C` should not be necessary. You can use sprintf to control the number of decimal places displayed for `$C`.	[reply] [d/l] [select]