Sabacthani has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm a bit confused... I wrote a script to test the Geo::Weather module, and it refuses to run. Then I cut and paste the script into the command line, and it runs fine. From the file, I get the error:
Can't use string ("-4") as a HASH ref
referring to this line:
print "The current temperature is $current->{temp} degrees\n";

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It really does work if I type "perl -w" at the command line and then paste it in... What silly mistake am I making this time? 
use strict;
use Geo::Weather;
my $weather = new Geo::Weather;
my $current = $weather->get_weather('19067');
print "The current temperature is $current->{temp} degrees\n";

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Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: I'm confused... using Geo::Weather
by Aighearach (Initiate) on Jun 25, 2001 at 22:06 UTC
    Your problem is probably that you're running on a unix system and don't have the hash-bang line correct. On my system I used: 
    #!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Geo::Weather;
my $weather = new Geo::Weather;
my $current = $weather->get_weather('19067');
print "The current temperature is $current->{temp} degrees\n";

    [download]
    and it ran fine. 80 degrees. If you leave out the first line altogether, it will probably try to run it with /bin/sh, which gives odd errors when it sees Perl...
    --
    Snazzy tagline here
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[d/l]
      No, I must've missed the first line when I pasted... regardless, when I cut-and-pasted your code (with the #!, and yes, /usr/bin/perl is the correct path on my system...) I still get that infernal error!
      Also, if I use $weather->report(); instead, I get an error from the perl module itself... The same hash ref error.

      Thank you for your time,
      Benjamin
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        I get the same error when I run the code on a Win32 system. Using the code on the Aighearach's reply.

        --BigJoe

        Learn patience, you must.
        Young PerlMonk, craves Not these things.
        Use the source Luke.
[reply]
        What is your perl version?
        --
        Snazzy tagline here
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Re: I'm confused... using Geo::Weather
by bikeNomad (Priest) on Jun 25, 2001 at 21:59 UTC
    Well, that means that $current is -4. Which is probably an error indication of some sort from get_weather(). It's a bit peculiar to have a function return either a HASH ref or a negative number, though (I'd wonder about the sanity of the writer of Geo::Weather if that were the case).
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      Thank you. As it happens, you are right to wonder...
      I'm still not sure exactly what was going on, but at least once the problem was when I requested get_weather('NY','New York');
      Apparently it really wants it in the format ('New York','NY') and instead of returning the ERROR_IN_QUERY message, it returned the ERROR_NOT_FOUND error code... all of the errors are negative numbers...

      Thanks again,
      Benjamin
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