I don't know which version of perl are you using but I have just tried again the script i sent to you And the ones with your modifications , both work well and do not Die as you explained : fatal error "x outside of string" Below is my perl -v output : C:\>perl -v
This is perl, v5.6.1 built for MSWin32-x86-multi-thread (with 1 registered patch, see perl -V for more detail) Copyright 1987-2001, Larry Wall Binary build 631 provided by ActiveState Tool Corp. http://www.ActiveState.com Built 17:16:22 Jan 2 2002 Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic License or the GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5 source kit. Complete documentation for Perl, including FAQ lists, should be found on this system using `man perl' or `perldoc perl'. If you have access to the Internet, point your browser at http://www.perl.com/, the Perl Home Page. José. -----Original Message----- From: zsdc [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2003 10:06 AM To: NYIMI Jose (BMB) Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Split based on length NYIMI Jose (BMB) wrote: > I have an other request : "code review" :-) > Below is my final code. > I'm sure that you guys will find > Some better style to write it ... This code doesn't work with the input you sent me. It dies processing the third line of input (i.e. the first one which is not skipped) with fatal error "x outside of string" when get_fields calls unpack. > sub get_fields{ > my($str)[EMAIL PROTECTED]; > my $format="$index_len $name_len $way_len"; > $format.=" $delim_len $meas_len" x $nof_meas; > unpack($format,$str); # <<<=== it dies here > } From perldiag manpage: 'x outside of string (F) You had a pack template that specified a relative position after the end of the string being unpacked. See "pack" in perlfunc.' Unfortunately I cannot help you with the debugging right now, but I hope others who helped you with unpack might be more up to date with your code and data. Still, as you asked about style, I made few mostly cosmetic changes to your code. The output is identical, it does exactly the same thing as your original code, even reproducing the fatal error, but might be somewhat cleaner to work with. I also demonstrated some magic with print. So here's my refactored version of your code: #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; #------------------ # Global variables #------------------ my $group_len = 64; my $index_len = 'A1'; my $name_len = 'A6'; my $way_len = 'A3'; my $delim_len = 'x1'; my $meas_len = 'A5'; my $nof_meas = 9; #------------- # Subroutines #------------- sub split_len { my ($str, $len) = @_; $str =~ /.{1,$len}/g; } sub get_fields { my $str = shift || $_; my $format = "$index_len $name_len $way_len"; $format .= " $delim_len $meas_len" x $nof_meas; unpack $format, $str; # <- DIES HERE: x outside of string } #------ # Main #------ ($,, $\) = ("\t", "\n"); while (<>) { next if $. < 3; /(\d{2}-\d{2}-\d{4}:\d{3})\s+(\d{2})(.+)/ or die "Bad input\n"; my ($date, $dummy, $str) = ($1, $2, $3); for (split_len $str, $group_len) { print $date, get_fields; } } __END__ I'm sure it's going to get much cleaner in a while, when other people change few other things. Ask if you're not sure how the print works here but you might first read about "$," and "$\" (the output field separator and the output record separator) in perldoc perlvar. Note that this code still dies on unpack, just like yours, so you still have to debug it anyway. Speaking about the unpack, I wouldn't use it here. For simple things it's great but with your data the format gets quite complicated. Take a look at these CPAN modules: Parse::FixedLength Data::FixedFormat Text::FixedLength Text::FixedLength::Extra AnyData AnyData::Format::Fixed DBD::AnyData I'm not sure which one would be best for you, but they all help handle fixed-length records data, exactly what you are doing manually. For example DBD::AnyData (which would probably be an overkill here, but is definitely worth knowing about) is a driver for DBI. You can use the data like it was a table in an SQL database. It uses SQL::Statement as SQL parsing and processing engine. The AnyData module helps you manipulate data in many formats (fixed length, tab delimited, pipe delimited, passwd style, CSV, XML, HTML tables, vertical/paragraph text files, etc.). You can use the data like it was a %hash or manipulate it with SQL queries with DBI and DBD::AnyData. AnyData also makes converting between formats very easy. Parse::FixedLength is very powerful. You define a parser object, which then can parse data. You can subclass Parse::FixedLength and make using it in your main program very easy by just calling new method on your parser class and feeding the new object with data. Data::FixedFormat is easier to use and its "count" keyword would be probably ideal for your needs here to use instead of get_fields subroutine, when you want to extract three different fields and then a list of many fields of the same length. Text::FixedLength is an old-school non-OO module, which haven't been updated for five years, but still is very functional, and there's a more recent Text::FixedLength::Extra extending its functionality. Well, I guess TMTOWTDI. If you want to choose the best one for you and avoid problems with manual parsing similar data in the future, then go to http://search.cpan.org/ find the modules I listed, read their description, synopsis, then maybe examples and other parts of the manual, and you should more or less know what you like most. -- ZSDC Perl and Systems Security Consulting **** DISCLAIMER **** "This e-mail and any attachment thereto may contain information which is confidential and/or protected by intellectual property rights and are intended for the sole use of the recipient(s) named above. 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