Re^2: parse array to replace specific spaces with pipes

Ah, yes...that can be bad. I was able to structure the query to ignore middle initials, but a few slipped in.

__DATA__
0211121253|Mike|Dell|ID06533
0211121253|A|Chris|Jones|ID02014 # this is not good
0211121253|Pa|Kettle|ID65255
0111119112|Mitch|Poo|ID05983
[download]

However, this leads me to the question: How do I remove the initial and/or period, leaving the data structure the same?

pseudo code: 
if row contains an element with one letter
  then remove letter
continue pipe delimiting...
[download]

Thanks, vince

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Re^3: parse array to replace specific spaces with pipes by roboticus (Chancellor) on Jul 10, 2009 at 22:44 UTC
neurotoxx: That would depend on your data source: If it's a database, you could add some delimiters during the query If it's a fixed-format flat file, you could take field lengths into account (substr, unpack) If there are a fixed number of fields in the row, you could put all the "extras" in the name field Perhaps you could take advantage of the fact that one of the fields matches /ID\d+/ That's generally the problem with "squishy" data. Sometimes you have to look it over and get clever.... ...roboticus	[reply]
Re^3: parse array to replace specific spaces with pipes by mzedeler (Pilgrim) on Jul 12, 2009 at 22:42 UTC
You can use `next` to skip the rest of an iteration in a loop: `while( ... ) { ... next if <something>; ... }` [download] The `<something>` is treated as an expression. Expressions can be `$variable =~ /<regex>/` or just a single variable, which evaluates to false if undef, 0 or ''.	[reply] [d/l] [select]