Doug Essinger-Hileman wrote: > I am just learning Perl, and am having a problem with something which > seems like it should be so easy. Still . . . . I have read through a > couple of books, including _Beginning Perl_ and _Picking Up Perl_, to > no avail.
Welcome! > > I am trying to read a file, then assign some information within a > script. The problem comes in assigning. My file has three lines. The > first line contains a list of names seperated by spaces; the next two > lines contain numbers: > > Doug Sandy Lois > 0 > 1 > > In order to isolate the problem, I have created a simplified script: > > #read from file > > open (CONTROL1, "<test.cont"); > @constants = <CONTROL1>; > close (CONTROL1); > > #parse > > $names = @constants[0]; > @group = qw($names); > > #print > > open (CONTROL2, ">test2.cont"); > print CONTROL2 "Names: $names"; > print CONTROL2 "Group: @group"; > close (CONTROL2); > > The test2.cont file shows that $names is being set as I expected: to > a string (Doug Sandy Lois). I assumed that @group = qw($names) would > fill the array with the string of names. However, test2.cont shows > that the value of @group is "$names". Obviously, my assumption was > wrong. > > So is there a way to directly fill the @group array with the string > now stored in $names? Or do I have to split the string and fill the > array in that manner? qw() means "quote words". It's a shortcut for specifying a list of LITERAL strings without having to use quotes and commas. What you want is: @group = split ' ', $names; qw() is documented in perldoc perlop. For the documentation on split(), see perldoc -f split -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response>
