Diagnosing invisible code is rather difficult so it would really help if you posted the problematic code. Your computer will almost invariably be doing exactly what you asked it to do. You don't need to *force* it to do anything, you just tell it what to do and it will do it. Usually :-)

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n\w+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

The part of the program that is giving me trouble is below, as I said before it was working fine on my home computer, but when I try it on my work computer it always prints the number you select -1. For example if the user selects 7 I am wanting it to print out $lines6.

use warnings;
use strict;

my @lines;
my $filename = shift;

open (IN, "$filename") or die ("Cannot open file :$!"); 
while (my $line = <IN>) {
    if (!($line =~ /\s*[a-qs-zA-Z]/)) {
        push (@lines,$line);
    }
}

close (IN) or die("Cannot close file: $!");

print "Enter link number you want to view:";
my $number1 = <STDIN>;
chomp $number1;

if ($number1 > $#lines | $number1 <= 0) {
    print "Number outside of array"
    }
    else {
        print "$lines[$number1-1]";
        }
[download]

Ok. Let me see if I got this right - you're complaining that if you enter 7 at home, it will print 6, but that if you enter 7 at work, it will print 7 ... ?

First off, the indices of an array go from 0 to $#lines. So, when you do $number1 <= 0 as a boundary condition, you're already cutting off one of your useable indices.

The second thing is that you're comparing the number they give you (from 1 .. N) to a range from (0 .. N-1). I would do a $number1--; right after the chomp.

The third thing is that you're using | (the bit-wise OR) when I think you mean to be using || (the logical OR).

A few style notes:

• if (!$blah) should be written unless ($blah)
• Never use a variable named $number1. Instead, use something like $link_num.
• I'd change your file-reading to something like this. It's clearer exactly what you're trying to do, which is to take in all the lines, then reject a certain type of line.

  open IN, "<$filename" or die "Cannot open $filename\n";
  my @lines = <IN>;
  close IN or die "Cannot close $filename\n";
  @lines = grep !/\s*[a-qs-zA-Z]/, @lines;
  [download]

• The \s* in your regular expression is useless, in that it doesn't add any restrictiveness. Generally, you don't see \s* in matches, just substitutions.
Hope this helps!

Instead of your if ($number > $#lines | $number <=0) section, you could try something like this:

if (defined $lines[$number1 - 1]) {
    print $lines[$number1 - 1];
    print "\n";
} else {
    print "No link at that index\n";
}
[download]

This will check if there's a value at the spot in the array. This will benefit you if, in the future, you expand your code to delete links, or if you accidentally have blank lines in your input file.

As always, TMTOWTDI.

use the \<CODE\> tags for this.

you can initialize by

my @array;
# or
my @array = ();
# or
my @array = 0;
# or ... many other ways
[download]

~Particle