Beginner needs help

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

I have just started using perl and am writing my first program. The problem being (and I know there is going to be an obvious solution that'll make me feel silly), when I run it and it compiles I get the following.

syntax error at line 4 : ')' unexpected
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Line 4 reads ...

open(CLI, "database_dump");
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I have tried removing the brackets and it picks up the next set of brackets as an error. This next line reads ...

While(<CLI>)
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Do I have include something or alter my PATH or what ??? Getting v. frustrated !!! Can anybody help ... cheers Rich

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Re: Beginner needs help by azatoth (Curate) on Jun 14, 2001 at 14:13 UTC
Post your code here, using the CODE tags. Most likely the error is somewhere before or after line 4. So show me da code! Also, use warnings; and use strict; for helpful debugging. Azatoth a.k.a Captain Whiplash Make Your Die Messages Full of Wisdom! Get YOUR PerlMonks Stagename here! Want to speak like a Londoner?	[reply]
Re: Beginner needs help by virtualsue (Vicar) on Jun 14, 2001 at 15:27 UTC
Do you have a line like this at the top of your script? `#!/path/to/perl -w # This line tells your shell to use Perl to run your script` If not, then that's likely to be the problem. We'll need to see the code to be certain, but I think that your problem may be a missing or broken shebang at the top of your script. On unix, the custom is for a /bin/sh to be fired up to run your script if the #! line is missing. Feeding Perl to a bourne shell usually gives it heartburn right away. :)	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Beginner needs help by Brovnik (Hermit) on Jun 14, 2001 at 14:12 UTC
If the code is only a few lines, you are better to include more context, since the error may be triggered by previous lines. are you using `strict` and `warnings` ? "While" should be "while". I think this is your main problem, since PERL thinks this is a call to a function rather than a while statement, so the {} following the While causes the error. You should also be checking the result of the open in case it fails. -- Brovnik	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Beginner needs help by Jonathan (Curate) on Jun 14, 2001 at 15:49 UTC
If you are using Unix is your file executable? The error message looks very much like a ksh one.	[reply]