Array whitespace

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

Hi,

open PASSWD, "ypcat passwd|";
my @nis_passwd=<PASSWD>;
close PASSWD;
print "@nis_passwd";
[download]

gets...
entry1:jfduwrn##:etc etc
problem is each subsequent line has one whitespace character. entry2:sdvuur294:etc etc
and so on. HATE THE WHITESPACE!
I am doing something wrong? Can I remove this whitespace cleanly? I need to write the data back to the passwd file so I need a clean file. Thanks! Joe

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Re: Array whitespace by hardburn (Abbot) on May 20, 2004 at 21:28 UTC
When you put a list into a string, it's concatnated with a space inbetween each list entry. Remove the quotes around the array, and then set `$,` (as documented in `[perldoc://perlvar]`). ---- send money to your kernel via the boot loader.. This and more wisdom available from Markov Hardburn.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Array whitespace by Belgarion (Chaplain) on May 20, 2004 at 21:29 UTC
Are you simply trying to print the output of the ypcat command? If so, try the following code: `open PASSWD, "ypcat passwd\|"; while (<PASSWD>) { print; } close PASSWD;` [download] Your current code is stringifying a list which does something like: `join(' ', @list);` [download] One final answer, if you change your last line to: `print @nis_passwd;` [download] (notice without the double quotes), the extra space will be removed.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Array whitespace by davido (Cardinal) on May 21, 2004 at 04:06 UTC
The special variable `$"` determines what character(s) will be used to join array elements when they're interpolated into a double-quoted string. Consider the following example: `my @array = qw/1 2 3 4 5/; print "@array\n"; { local $" = "\n"; print "@array\n"; } { local $" = " see perlvar "; print "@array\n"; } { local $" = ""; print "@array\n"; } __OUTPUT__ 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 see perlvar 2 see perlvar 3 see perlvar 4 see perlvar 5 12345` [download] Hope this helps! Dave	[reply] [d/l] [select]