> Hi, I am new to perl and have been chucked in the deep end!!! I have
been
> asked to write a perl script, with a output in report style;
>
> Description for script:
> Read a file, (sorted)
> take certain data from the file, (problem)
> put the certain data in to fields. (problem)
>
> The big problem being that the File is not sorted in any form, e.g. no
> existing columns or fields or Headings!
>
> What I need to get from the file are:
> ID NUMBER, BranchNAME,
ADDRESS.
>
> The file contains the above 3 data types and about another 5, which I
need
> to get rid off!!!!!
>
> Can any body please suggest how do this task or what I need to read up
on
> (topics e.g. Report writing etc) or any other tutorials on report
writing
> or, any thing to show me how to get certain data from a file
> please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
> Any help would be appreciated as I only have two days to this in!!!
Post an example of the input, 10-20 lines or so.
Also, state roughly how many lines there will be in
an input file.
Reading the file, pulling data out, and structuring
the data you've pulled out, will probably be relatively
easy based on your brief description.
The output might be real simple, or might be tricky,
depending on what's needed.
So, post a better idea of what output is needed.
If the output is going to be pretty short and/or only used
a couple times, it might be best to just keep the output
format extremely simple.
Otherwise, if you can dump the output into some other
software that's good at taking structured data and
doing report layouts of the sort you need, then maybe
use that.
Otherwise, if the output is going to be many pages long,
and you want fairly simple report style pagination and
formatting, then you *might* want to use perl's 'format'
features. To read up on the latter, type the following at
a shell prompt:
perldoc perlform