Re: Iterative Subroutine Approach Question

You probably want to use a simple foreach like you are doing. It sounds like you've got the hard parts figured out. Basically, in your loop, first use your if statement to see whether your row contains a SYSTEM header. If it does, set a variable to contain the description which appeared in the row above. Something like this pseudocode:


my $current_description;
foreach $row (@rows) {
    if ($row is a 'SYSTEM' row) {
        $current_description = (description from 2 rows above);
    }
    if ($row is a part number) {
        insert into database ($part_number, $current_description)
    }
}
[download]

That way, you're just inserting all the parts and descriptions, and all you do is change your description whenever you hit a SYSTEM row. If you need more information than just a description, you can use a hash structure instead of a scalar, but the concept is the same.

UPDATE: Argh, another double post! As ELISHEVA says below, go back to your original post and look at the answers there. It's not nice to have me spend my time helping you when I don't know that others have already given you good advice on the same topic.

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Re^2: Iterative Subroutine Approach Question by finhagen (Sexton) on Mar 12, 2009 at 22:22 UTC
Bellaire, Thank you for your advice. The issue I was trying to address was with the same script but a different issue. My aim was to avoid posing too complex a set of requests but I can see how that might create confusion. My apologies to the perl monk community. With regard to my previous post, I will reply within that post but the "eq" suggestion did not resolve my problem but I discovered I could move my statement into its own foreach loop and that addressed the specific issue I posed there. That had the interesting result that only the last SYSTEM keyword and associated current_description was appended to the row during the insert. So even though there were 6 SYSTEM definitions the foreach loop went through them all and ended up only returning the last one in the spreadsheet. That is what has prompted the question about an iterative subroutine approach. Regarding your recommendation, per my result above, my concern is I need to update the $current_description variable each time the foreach loop hits a new "SYSTEM" row. I may be exposing my relative inexperience but I don't know how I refresh the $current_description with the new '2 rows above' associated with the new SYSTEM value? How do I close out the original foreach loop and start a new one? I was thinking I could create a subroutine which I would trigger to restart each time it hit the "SYSTEM" key word. However, I am not sure how to start and stop that subroutine. Is there a way to upload the spreadsheet I am parsing. I am sure that would be helpful but I don't see how I can do that. Hagen Here is the code I have that returns the last $current_description from the last SYSTEM definition. Read more... (18 kB)	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: Iterative Subroutine Approach Question by bellaire (Hermit) on Mar 13, 2009 at 00:29 UTC
With regards to closing out your original foreach loop and starting a new one, that's exactly what I don't think you should do. It's possible, but it makes your code more complicated than it needs to be. In the code you've given, you've got two separate foreach loops, each one having internal if-structures. Simply move all of the if-structures into a single large foreach loop, i.e.: `foreach my $row ($sheet->{MinRow}+18..$sheet->{MaxRow}){ if ($sheet->{Cells}[$row][2]->{Val} eq "SYSTEM") {$comment = $shee +t->{Cells}[$row-2][2]->{Val};} if ($sheet->{Cells}[$row][3]->{Val} eq "UPGRADE SOLUTION") {$upgra +de=1} else {$upgrade=0}; if ( $sheet->{Cells}[$rw][0]->{Val} =~ /(^\d+)/ ) { $line = $sheet->{Cells}[$rw][0]->{Val}; $qty = $sheet->{Cells}[$rw][1]->{Val}; ...` [download] Doing that should make sure that `$comment` is set appropriately each time you get to a detail line, without the need for any more than the single, large foreach loop.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: Iterative Subroutine Approach Question by finhagen (Sexton) on Mar 13, 2009 at 02:58 UTC
Bellaire, You were right - your recommendation worked right out of the box. This is huge for me and my project. I am so grateful. Thank you! Hagen Finley Boulder, CO	[reply]