I am extracting the language codes from some MARC records using the leader
(field 008), position 35 and three characters long. The code works fine as
long as the 008 does have a language code in it. However, if there is no
language code, I want to assign the code "ENG". The problem is my test for
an empty language code is not working. I've tried a few variants of the
regex, but come up empty handed. When I print out the empty language code
it is just three blank spaces, but my regex isn't picking that up. Any
ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Here's the code snippet:
## get the language code from the 008 field
my $leader = $record->field('008');
my $language = uc(substr($leader->as_string, 35, 3));
### If there is no language code in the 008, assign ENG for ENGLISH
if($language =~ /[^A-Z]/ ) { ## I've also tried /^$/ and /[A-Z]{3}/
and a non regex comparison of $language == " "
$lang = "ENG";
} else {
$lang = $language; ## from above
--
Migell Acosta
migell.aco...@gmail.com
