Dizzy74 wrote: > > Hi All Hello,
> Today I was trying to do some work with perl and needed to use a > function that would trim leading or trailing spaces from a string. perldoc -q "blank space" Found in /usr/lib/perl5/5.6.0/pod/perlfaq4.pod How do I strip blank space from the beginning/end of a string? > Looked on the web The Perl documentation should have been installed on your hard disk when you installed Perl. > and found basicaly perl uses either chop or chomp each > with their own features. chop() removes the last character of a string _whatever it may be_, chomp() removes the value of $/ (which is set to "\n" by default) from the end of a string. > When I tried to apply it to my $var it either returned zeros or blanks. > Finally I found what looks to be a regular expression replacement which > does what I want it to, but I would never think it (trimming) to be so > tricky. I though it was supposed to be "easy things easy..." <grin> > > open(FILE,"F:\\test_db\\Admin\\MINIHI\\DEF\\prog_list.txt"|| die "cant open file") ; You have a precedence problem with the || operator, either parenthesize correctly or use the or operator. Perl allows you to use slashes instead of backslashes as path separators. You should include the $! variable in the error message so that you know _why_ the open failed. my $file = 'F:/test_db/Admin/MINIHI/DEF/prog_list.txt'; Either: open( FILE, $file ) || die "cant open $file: $!"; Or: open FILE, $file or die "cant open $file: $!"; > chomp(@tblname = <FILE>); > open (outfile, ">F:\\test_db\\Admin\\MINIHI\\DEF\\INSERTprog_list.sql"|| > die "cant open file") ; Same as above. > foreach $progid (@tblname) { > > $progid =~ s/\s+$//; This should work unless there are non-whitespace characters at the end of the string. The \s character class includes the characters " ", "\n", "\r", "\t", and "\f". > print outfile ("insert into ... where program_id = '$progid' > and rownum <=300 ;\n") ; > print "insert into ... where program_id = '$progid' and rownum > <=300 ;\n" ; > > } > close outfile ; > > #### prog_list.txt example > > name -space-space > name_address -tab-space > name_phone - somekind of whitespace John -- use Perl; program fulfillment -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]