>> I've tried everything I can think of, but I feel like a 6th grader trying to
>> solve a 7th grade math problem:
>>
>> I'm trying to build a "pretty-fier" for any tab-delimited text file
>> (basically space-pad the columns so the decimals line up). I search through
>> the columns finding the longest field with and highest precision level for
>> each column, then create a format string for the printf command. The guts
>> of it looks like this:
>>
>> **************************************
>> $formatstr = "";
>> $index = 0;
>> foreach (@lwid) {
>> $formatstr .= "%$lwid[$index].$lprec[$index]f".'\t';
>> $index++;
>> }
>
> In idiomatic perl that would be written as:
>
> foreach my $index ( 0 .. $#lwid ) {
> $formatstr .= "%$lwid[$index].$lprec[$index]f\t";
> }
Nice! I wouldn't have thought to use a foreach on an on-the-spot (?) array
like that.
>> substr($formatstr,-2,2) = "";
>> $formatstr .= '\n';
>
> Why not use join() instead of adding an extra "\t" and removing it
> later:
>
> my $formatstr = join( "\t", map "%$lwid[$_].$lprec[$_]f", 0 .. $#lwid )
> . "\n";
Wow. I would've never thought of that.
> Also, instead of using two arrays for width and precision, it might be
> simpler to use an array of arrays.
Good idea, I wouldn't have thought of that either.
>> open(FILE, ">$file$ext") || die("Couldn't create $file$ext: $!\n");
>>
>> foreach (@content) {
>> @fields = split;
>
> I assume that you are split()ing the input in order to measure the width
> of each field so you could store the contents in an array of arrays to
> avoid split()ing the data again here. Also you could pre-format the
> data and avoid this foreach loop altogether.
Yes, absolutely right.
>> if (@fields) { printf FILE $formatstr, @fields; }
>> else { print FILE $_; }
>> }
>>
>> close(FILE);
>> **************************************
>>
>> ... but that "printf" spits out actual "\t" and "\n"s. How can I get the
>> printf to interpret those into tabs and newlines?
>
> Put escape sequences in double quoted strings, not single quoted
> strings, to have them interpolated properly.
I'll try it.
Thanks for the reply, John, you always manage to clear things up for me.
- Bryan
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