Hi Pam. Some peripheral comments, now that others have
done all of the hard work :)
John W. Krahn wrote:
> Pam Derks wrote:
>> I want to grap the:
>> last first middle(if any) email
>> from a text file
>>
>> sample data:
>> Smith, Mary [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Jones, Tommy Lee [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
>> can someone suggest improvements to the code below?
>>
>> #!/usr/bin/perl -w
>
> use strict;
>
>
>> my ($first, $last, $middle, @fields);
>
> You should define these variables in the smallest possible scope
> instead of at the top of the program.
>
>> open(IN, "text.txt") or die("nope: $!\n");
Putting a \n on the end of the 'die' string stops Perl from putting
the source line number and data input line number on the end.
... or die $!;
is better for debugging.
>> while($line = <IN>){
>
> while ( my $line = <IN> ) {
You might think about using:
while (<IN>)
where the file records are placed in $_, which can be used as an
implicit parameter for most built-in functions.
>> chomp($line);
>>
>> @fields=split(/ /, $line);
>
> split / / will split using a single space, it is more efficient to use
> the default.
>
> my @fields = split ' ', $line;
For instance, this would be:
my @fields = split;
with the above form of while().
>> #an array in scalar context returns number of elements
>> $number = @fields;
>> print("number: $number\n");
>>
>> #if there is no remainder, there are 3 elements
>> if($number % 3 == 0){
>
> Why use modulus, just use == 3.
>
> if ( @fields == 3 ) {
>
>
>> $first = $fields[0];
>> $last = $fields[1];
>> $email= $fields[2];
$first and $last are always fields [0] and [1] (whichever way round!,
and you can index from the end of an array with negative numbers,
so:
$last = $fields[0];
$first = $fields[1];
$email = $fields[-1];
$middle is either field [2] or blank, depending on the size of the
array:
$middle = (@fields > 3 ? $fields[2] : '');
Apart from that, everything I an think of has been said.
HTH,
Rob
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