in reply to Re^6: How to create an output file for each input file
in thread How to create an output file for each input file

'>>' says "append to an existing file". I believe a single '>' says 'create if necessary, over-write if it already exists'.

When you do the print, do you print OUTPUT_FILE?

If you post your current code, I (or someone else; it's bedtime for me) could better comment.

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Re^8: How to create an output file for each input file
by Anonymous Monk on Apr 03, 2008 at 01:11 UTC
    I'm slowly piecing it together. Thanks so much for your insight, I'll share more later, getting late here too.
[reply]
      Okay, I figured it out. In my original code snippet, I was creating (what I thought) was a unique file name using the date. But because I was only going down to the second, and the script was running so quickly on test data, it thought it should "append" to the existing file. I redid the naming convention for the outbox file to add the original name of the input file, thereby creating a unique output file after each pass of the foreach loop. The final test code below:

      ########Test Variables
      $outbox = "G:\\outbox\\";
      $inbox = "G:\\inbox\\";
      $archive = "G:\\archive\\";
      $log = "G:\\samslog.txt";


      ####################get the names of all .dat files in inbox directory
      opendir(DIR,$inbox);
      @files = grep(/\.TAB$/,readdir(DIR));
      closedir(DIR);


      ################
      ## loop through the TAB files###
      foreach $file (@files) {
      ##Open the .TAB file for reading
      open(TAB_FILE, $inbox.$file) || die "Can't open file: $!";

      #create file name
      $verifile = $outbox.$file."_FIXED.TAB";

      #print column headings in output file
      open(OUTPUT_FILE, ">>$verifile")||die "Can't open file: $!";
      print OUTPUT_FILE "Column1 Column2 Column3\n";


      ##Loop through each line of the file (1 part number per line)
      while (<TAB_FILE>){
      ##Use chomp to get rid of carriage returns and spaces
      chomp;
      ($column1, $column2, $column3) = split("\t");
      print OUTPUT_FILE $column1."\t".$column2."\t".$column3."\n";


      close TAB_FILE;
      close OUTPUT_FILE;


      }# end for each file
[reply]

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