Re: Will a substitution in an if/else control structure default to $

Yup, as I thought - the code is bogus. $table->cell (...) returns the contents of a single cell, not an array. But you already have all the table information in @totalrows. Consider:

use strict;
use warnings;
use HTML::TableExtract;

my $te = HTML::TableExtract->new ();
$te->parse (<<HTML);
<table>
    <tr><td>Cell 1</td><td>Cell 2</td><td>Cell 3</td></tr>
    <tr><td>Cell 4</td><td>Cell 5</td><td>Cell 6</td></tr>
</table>
HTML

my $table = $te->first_table_found;
my @totalrows = $table->rows ();

print "$_->[0] - $_->[1] - $_->[2]\n" for @totalrows;
[download]

Prints:

Cell 1 - Cell 2 - Cell 3
Cell 4 - Cell 5 - Cell 6
[download]

I've no idea what you are trying to achieve with the match and substitutions so I've left that stuff right out, but you can loop over the rows using for my $row (@totalrows) {...} where $row is a reference to the array of cells for the current row.

Maybe you could provide a similar sample with your problem data as the HTML data so we can see what you are trying to do?

Update: Changing the @totalrows assignment to:

my @totalrows =
    map {my $cells = $_; $_ ||= '***' for @{$cells}[0 .. 2]; $cells}
    $table->rows ();
[download]

sets "missing" cells to a default value ('***'). Running the updated code against the sample HTML generates:

Boss  - Firstname Surname  - ***
Secretary  - Name Surname, Mr Jones Smith - ***
Medical Doctor  - Bob Middlename Hope  - ***
Position 1  - Worker  - Secretary 
*** - Asdf Ghjk  - Name Lastname, First Last 
*** - Sally Mally  - Joe Smoe, The Who, Will Timberland 
Position 2  - Paula Simon  - Raymonde Maalouf
[download]

Perl reduces RSI - it saves typing

Comment on Re: Will a substitution in an if/else control structure default to $_? Select or Download Code

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Re^2: Will a substitution in an if/else control structure default to $_? by Lawliet (Curate) on Aug 21, 2008 at 05:51 UTC
How should I go about formatting the output as: `Boss - Firstname Surname Secretary - Name Surname, Mr Jones Smith Medical Doctor - Bob Middlename Hope Position 1 - Asdf Ghjk - Name Lastname, First Last Position 1 - Sally Mally - Joe Smoe, The Who, Will Timberland Position 2 - Paula Simon - Raymonde Maalouf` [download] To those who cannot pick up the subtleness, I need the position always displayed (so I can loop through each row and insert into the database). I was thinking of inserting each new position into an array, then if there is no current position, use `$array[-1];` Would this work? I'm so adjective, I verb nouns! chomp; # nom nom nom	[reply] [d/l] [select]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.

Re^2: Will a substitution in an if/else control structure default to $_?
by Lawliet (Curate) on Aug 21, 2008 at 05:51 UTC

How should I go about formatting the output as:

Boss - Firstname Surname
Secretary - Name Surname, Mr Jones Smith
Medical Doctor - Bob Middlename Hope
Position 1 - Asdf Ghjk  - Name Lastname, First Last 
Position 1 - Sally Mally  - Joe Smoe, The Who, Will Timberland 
Position 2 - Paula Simon  - Raymonde Maalouf
[download]

To those who cannot pick up the subtleness, I need the position always displayed (so I can loop through each row and insert into the database). I was thinking of inserting each new position into an array, then if there is no current position, use $array[-1]; Would this work?

I'm so adjective, I verb nouns!

chomp; # nom nom nom

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]