david wrote:
>the chop(EXP) function always remove the last character (or byte if you are
>dealing with ASCII test only) from the applied EXP or $_ if EXP is omitted.
>it doesn't care what that character is. it's true that if you happen to have
>a single space at the end of your string, chop will remove it for you, but
>if you have many spaces at the end, only one will be removed.
>
>the chomp(EXP) function remove the last character from EXP(or $_) only if
>that character is a newline for your OS. chomp() knows what newline your OS
>uses so you don't have to worry about it. again, chomp doesn't remove
>spaces(unless you happen to treat newline and space is the same).
>
>to trim spaces, try:
>
>$line ="\t\t abcd\t \t\n";
>$line =~ /^\s+//;
>$line =~ /\s+$//; #-- also remove \n
>print "|$line|"; #-- prints |abcd| without leading or tailing spaces
>
>__END__
>
>
Humm... Ok, I see. It looks like I have to get a better understanding of
using regular expressions.
>also, i notice that you use 'outfile' as one of your open file handle. using
>all lower case is not recommanded because Perl names all of it's functions
>using lower case. what happen if later version of Perl happen to have a
>function call 'outfile'? what will the following do then:
>
>print outfile "hi";
>
>prints hi to file handle outfile?
>or
>prints whatever outfile() return to STDOUT?
>
>if you have warning enable like '-w' (which i think you should), Perl will
>warn you about using all lower case for file handle.
>
>david
>
Ok Noted and will do
Thanks to everyone who responded.
It looks like Ill do something like this in the future
from perldoc -q strip blank space
# trim whitespace in the scalar, the array,
# and all the values in the hash
foreach ($scalar, @array, @hash{keys %hash}) {
s/^\s+//;
s/\s+$//;
}
I just diddnt think it would/should be this... exotic
Im used to TRIM LTRIM RTRIM....
<sigh>
Thanks again to everyone for their explanations
rob
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