On Tuesday 23 March 2004 11:18 am, Rob Torres wrote:
> Hello,
> I am writing a simple perl script to count the # of characters in a given
> field. At the command line I can write >>wc -m somefile.txt, and get the
> total character count. But in the script I am splitting a text file and
> then doing a count on an element of the array.
>
> code snippet:
> **************************
> while (<FILE>)
> {
> chomp;
> (@fields) = split(/\t/);
> $count = wc -m $fields[12];
> print "$count\n";
> }
> **************************
>
> Here is the error I receive when I check the syntax.
>
> >perl -c count.pl
>
> Unrecognized file test: -m at count.pl line 20.
>
>
> I've tried many different ways of writing this, but can't seem to get it
> working. Any ideas/help?
> Thanks,
> Rob
Rob -
You're mixing Xs and Os. 'wc' is an external program that must be
run under a 'shell' (bash, sh, etc.) - NOT perl. Although you can
execucte external commands within perl ( via 'system' or '`...`', this
script should use perl internal functions like:
**************************
use strict; # get in this habit
use warnings;
while (<FILE>)
{
chomp;
my @fields = split(/\t/);
my $count = 0;
for my $field( @fields ) {
$count += length $field;
}
print "$count\n";
}
**************************
Aloha => Beau;
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