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

I am trying to read a line of text from a file, and use it to create an array called @list so that I can access the individual elements. The text file is called testhash.txt and at present contains a single line of text that reads:
'key1,value1','key2,value2','key3,value3','key4,value4'

The script behaves as if @list is a single line of text rather than an array. Yet if I simply copy and paste the line of text into @list like so:

@list=('key1,value1','key2,value2','key3,value3','key4,value4');

then I can do arrayish things with it. Here is my script: 

#testhash.txt has a single line of text that reads: 
#'key1,value1','key2,value2','key3,value3','key4,value4'
open(HASH,"testhash.txt"); 

$line=(<HASH>);
chomp $line;
@list=($line);

@list=('key1,value1','key2,value2','key3,value3','key4,value4');
print "here is \@list:\n";
print $list[0];
print $list[3];
print "\nEnter the keycode:";
chop ($find=<STDIN>);
foreach (@list) {
    ($keycode,$keyvalue)=split /,/; #split up the array elements
    if ($find=~/$keycode/i) {
        print "Keycode $keycode has the value $keyvalue \n";
    }
}

[download]

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: How do I read a line of text from a file into an array?
by ton (Friar) on Jul 17, 2001 at 00:57 UTC
    looks to me like you should be using hashes, not arrays. I'd do something like this: 
    use strict;

open(HASH, "testhash.txt") || die;
my $line = <HASH>;
chomp $line;
$line =~ s/'//g;
my %hash = split(/,/, $line);

print "\nEnter the keycode: ";
chomp($line = <STDIN>);
print "Keycode $line has the value $hash{lc($line)}\n" if ($hash{lc($l
+ine)});

    [download]
    Note that this will not match superstrings of valid keycodes, which your code does. I'm fairly certain that this was not your intent :)

    -Ton

    Originally posted as a Categorized Answer.

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