in reply to lost wtih blank data

You could:

$xyz = ' ' if ! defined $xyz;
print "<td colspan=x>$xyz</td>\n";

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but maybe there is more you want to tell us about your problem?

True laziness is hard work

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Re^2: lost wtih blank data
by bv (Friar) on Dec 09, 2009 at 02:57 UTC

    A shorter version (for Perl 5.10 and later) with the same meaning would be this:

    $xyz //= '&nbsp;';
print "<td colspan=x>$xyz</td>\n";

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    But thinking about it just reminds me that my vim syntax highlighter doesn't understand these new 5.10 features.

    @_=qw;
Just another Perl hacker,;
;$_=q=print
"@_"= and eval;

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Re^2: lost wtih blank data
by saffron (Initiate) on Dec 09, 2009 at 03:11 UTC

    Thank you for your help, I will try this. I bid you peace.

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