Mary Anderson wrote:
> Hi All,
> I know this isn't strictly a cgi problem, but it is arising in a cgi
> application. I have a loop which reads certain fields, hashed on names.
> Some of my fields hold character strings, some hold numbers. Sometimes
> the number field is a blank. I need a test on the field value $fieldValue
> which will tell me if my field was blank regardless of whether it holds a
> character string or a number.
>
> I would like to say something like
>
> $fieldValue = (($fieldValue == 0) or $fieldValue) ? $fieldValue : 'null'
>
> but perl appears to have a strange interpretation of $fieldValue == 0 if
> $fieldValue is a character.
>
> Thanks
> Mary
>
> I have seen references to a function which will do the trick, but it
> is not mentioned in the camel book.
>
0 or any other number translates to a string when using the 'eq'
operator, so you could check to see whether $fieldValue is blank using,
if ($fieldValue eq '') {
# $fieldValue is defined but empty
}
--or--
if ($fieldValue ne '') {
# $fieldValue is not blank (but may be false)
}
You could also check using the length function, but I wouldn't bother
unless for some reason the above won't work.
HTH,
http://danconia.org
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