When I want to assign input file to array, I am getting this error.
while (<>) {
my #tmp = split;
push my #arr,[#tmp];
print "#arr\n";
}
output: ARRAY(0x7f0b00)
ARRAY(0x7fb2f0)
If I change [ to ( then I am getting the required output.
while (<>) {
my #tmp = split;
push my #arr,(#tmp);
print "#arr\n";
output: hello, testing the perl
check the arrays.
What is the deference between (#tmp) and [#tmp]?
Normal parentheses () have no special function besides changing precedence. They are commonly used to confine a list, e.g. my #arr = (1,2,3) Square brackets return an array reference. In your case, you would be constructing a two-dimensional array. (You would, if your code was not broken).
Your code should perhaps be written like this. Note that you need to declare the array outside the loop block, otherwise it will not keep values from previous iterations. Note also that you do not need to use a #tmp array, you can simply put the split inside the push.
my #arr; # declare #arr outside the loop block
while (<>) {
push #arr, [ split ]; # stores array reference in #arr
}
for my $aref (#arr) {
print "#$aref"; # print your values
}
This array would have the structure:
$arr[0] = [ "hello,", "testing", "the", "perl" ];
$arr[1] = [ "check", "the", "arrays." ];
This is a good idea if you for example want to keep lines of input from being mixed up. Otherwise all values end up in the same level of the array.
Related
I have a array which have certain elements. Each element have two char "BC" followed by a number
e.g - "BC6"
I want to extract the number which is present and store in a different array.
use strict;
use warnings;
use Scalar::Util qw(looks_like_number);
my #band = ("BC1", "BC3");
foreach my $elem(#band)
{
my #chars = split("", $elem);
foreach my $ele (#chars) {
looks_like_number($ele) ? 'push #band_array, $ele' : '';
}
}
After execution #band_array should contain (1,3)
Can someone please tell what I'm doing wrong? I am new to perl and still learning
To do this with a regular expression, you need a very simple pattern. /BC(\d)/ should be enough. The BC is literal. The () are a capture group. They save the match inside into a variable. The first group relates to $1 in Perl. The \d is a character group for digits. That's 0-9 (and others, but that's not relevant here).
In your program, it would look like this.
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
my #band = ('BC1', 'BC2');
my #numbers;
foreach my $elem (#band) {
if ($elem =~ m/BC(\d)/) {
push #numbers, $1;
}
}
print Dumper #numbers;
This program prints:
$VAR1 = '1';
$VAR2 = '2';
Note that your code had several syntax errors. The main one is that you were using #band = [ ... ], which gives you an array that contains one array reference. But your program assumed there were strings in that array.
Just incase your naming contains characters other than BC this will exctract all numeric values from your list.
use strict;
use warnings;
my #band = ("AB1", "BC2", "CD3");
foreach my $str(#band) {
$str =~ s/[^0-9]//g;
print $str;
}
First, your array is an anonymous array reference; use () for a regular array.
Then, i would use grep to filter out the values into a new array
use strict;
use warnings;
my #band = ("BC1", "BC3");
my #band_array = grep {s/BC(\d+)/$1/} #band;
$"=" , "; # make printing of array nicer
print "#band_array\n"; # print array
grep works by passing each element of an array in the code in { } , just like a sub routine. $_ for each value in the array is passed. If the code returns true then the value of $_ after the passing placed in the new array.
In this case the s/// regex returns true if a substitution is made e.g., the regex must match. Here is link for more info on grep
I’m trying to filter an array of terms using another array in Perl. I have Perl 5.18.2 on OS X, though the behavior is the same if I use 5.010. Here’s my basic setup:
#!/usr/bin/perl
#use strict;
my #terms = ('alpha','beta test','gamma','delta quadrant','epsilon',
'zeta','eta','theta chi','one iota','kappa');
my #filters = ('beta','gamma','epsilon','iota');
foreach $filter (#filters) {
for my $ind (0 .. $#terms) {
if (grep { /$filter/ } $terms[$ind]) {
splice #terms,$ind,1;
}
}
}
This works to pull out the lines that match the various search terms, but the array length doesn’t change. If I write out the resulting #terms array, I get:
[alpha]
[delta quadrant]
[zeta]
[eta]
[theta chi]
[kappa]
[]
[]
[]
[]
As you might expect from that, printing scalar(#terms) gets a result of 10.
What I want is a resulting array of length 6, without the four blank items at the end. How do I get that result? And why isn’t the array shrinking, given that the perldoc page about splice says, “The array grows or shrinks as necessary.”?
(I’m not very fluent in Perl, so if you’re thinking “Why don’t you just...?”, it’s almost certainly because I don’t know about it or didn’t understand it when I heard about it.)
You can always regenerate the array minus things you don't want. grep acts as a filter allowing you to decide which elements you want and which you don't:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
my #terms = ('alpha','beta test','gamma','delta quadrant','epsilon',
'zeta','eta','theta chi','one iota','kappa');
my #filters = ('beta','gamma','epsilon','iota');
my %filter_exclusion = map { $_ => 1 } #filters;
my #filtered = grep { !$filter_exclusion{$_} } #terms;
print join(',', #filtered) . "\n";
It's pretty easy if you have a simple structure like %filter_exclusion on hand.
Update: If you want to allow arbitrary substring matches:
my $filter_exclusion = join '|', map quotemeta, #filters;
my #filtered = grep { !/$filter_exclusion/ } #terms;
To see what's going on, print the contents of the array in each step: When you splice the array, it shrinks, but your loop iterates over 0 .. $#terms, so at the end of the loop, $ind will point behind the end of the array. When you use grep { ... } $array[ $too_large ], Perl needs to alias the non-existent element to $_ inside the grep block, so it creates an undef element in the array.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use feature qw{ say };
my #terms = ('alpha', 'beta test', 'gamma', 'delta quadrant', 'epsilon',
'zeta', 'eta', 'theta chi', 'one iota', 'kappa');
my #filters = qw( beta gamma epsilon iota );
for my $filter (#filters) {
say $filter;
for my $ind (0 .. $#terms) {
if (grep { do {
no warnings 'uninitialized';
/$filter/
} } $terms[$ind]
) {
splice #terms, $ind, 1;
}
say "\t$ind\t", join ' ', map $_ || '-', #terms;
}
}
If you used $terms[$ind] =~ /$filter/ instead of grep, you'd still get uninitialized warnings, but as there's no need to alias the element, it won't be created.
I have an array populated with cities. I want to pass the array by reference to a sub routine and print each city to output. However, I have the following problems:
I can access each element before my while loop in the subroutine. But I cannot access the elements within my while loop. I get the error message:
...
Use of uninitialized value in print at line 44, line 997 (#1)
Use of uninitialized value in print at line 44, line 998 (#1)
...
The following is some code. I have commented what prints and what doesn't (I tried to cut out code that is not needed for my explanation...):
#cities;
# Assume cities is loaded successfully
&loadCities(getFileHandle('cities.txt'), $NUM_CITIES, \#cities);
&printElements(getFileHandle('names.txt'), \#cities);
sub printElements{
my $counter = 0;
my $arraySize = scalar $_[1];
# Prints fine!!!
print #{$_[1][($counter)%$arraySize];
while ((my $line = $_[0]->getline()) && $counter < 1000){
# Doesn't print. Generates the above error
print #{$_[1][($counter)%$arraySize];
$counter += 1;
}
}
The Perl syntax has me super confused. I do not understand what is going on with #{$_[1]}[0]. I am trying to work it out.
$_[1], treat the value at this location as scalar value (memory
address of the array)
#{...}, interpret what is stored at this
memory address as an array
#{...} [x], access the element at index x
Am I on the right track?
My first tip is that you should put use strict; and use warnings; at the top of your script. This generally reveals quite a few things.
This line: print #{$_[1][($counter)%$arraySize]; doesn't have a closing }. You also don't need the parenthesis around $counter.
Like you mentioned, the best/most clear way to get the length of an array is my $arraySize = scalar #{$_[1]};.
You can check out the documentation here for working with references. I'll give you a quick overview.
You can declare an array as normal
my #array = (1, 2, 3);
Then you can reference it using a backslash.
my $array_ref = \#array;
If you want to use the reference, use #{...}. This is just like using a regular array.
print #{$array_ref};
You could also declare it as a reference to begin with using square braces.
my $array_ref = [1, 2, 3];
print #{$array_ref}; # prints 123
In Perl, a 2-dimensional array is actually an array of array references. Here is an example:
my #array = ( ['a', 'b', 'c'], ['d', 'e', 'f'], ['g', 'h', 'i'] );
print #{$array[1]}; # prints def
Now let's try passing in an array reference to a subroutine.
my #array = ( ['a', 'b', 'c'], ['d', 'e', 'f'], ['g', 'h', 'i'] );
example(\#array); # pass in an array reference
sub example {
my #arr = #{$_[0]}; # use the array reference to assign a new array
print #{$arr[1]};
print #{$_[0][1]}; # using the array reference works too!
}
Now let's put it together and print the whole 2-d array.
my #array = ( ['a', 'b', 'c'], ['d', 'e', 'f'], ['g', 'h', 'i'] );
example(\#array);
sub example {
my #arr = #{$_[0]};
for my $ref (#arr) {
print #{$ref};
}
} # prints abcdefghi
You could adapt this example pretty easily if you wanted to use it for your printElements subroutine.
Another note about printing the elements in an array. Let's take this line from the last example:
print #{$ref};
Since we are calling it every time through the loop, we may want to print a new line at the end of it.
print #{$ref} . "\n";
What does this print? Try it! Does it work?
This is where the built-in subroutine join comes in handy.
print join(" ", #{$ref}) . "\n";
For loops are generally the best way to iterate through an array. My answer here talks a little about doing it with a while loop: https://stackoverflow.com/a/21950936/2534803
You can also check out this question: Best way to iterate through a Perl array
To make references a bit easier to understand, I prefer the -> syntax instead of the munge-it-all-together syntax.
Instead of:
#{$_[1]}[0].
Try
$_[1]->[0];
It means the same thing. It's easier, and it's cleaner to see. You can see that $_[1] is an array reference, and that you're referencing the first element in that array reference.
However, an even better way is to simply set variables for your various element in #_. You have to type a few more letters, but your code is much easier to understand, and is a lot easier to debug.
sub print_elements {
my $file_handle = shift; # This isn't a "reference", but an actual file handle
my $cities_array_ref = shift; # This is a reference to your array
my #cities = #{ $cities_array_ref }; # Dereferencing makes it easier to do your program
Now, your subroutine is dealing with variables which have names, and your array reference is an array which makes things cleaner. Also, you cannot accidentally affect the values in your main program. When you use #_, it's a direct link to the values you pass to it. Modifying #_ modifies the value in your main program which is probably not what you want to do.
So, going through your subroutine:
sub printElements {
my file_handle = shift;
my $cities_array_ref = shift;
my #cities = #{ $cities_array_ref };
my $counter;
my $array_size = #cities; # No need for scalar. This is automatic
while ( my $line = $file_handle->getline and $counter < 1000 ) {
chomp $line;
my $city_number = $counter % $array_size;
print $cities[$city_number]. "\n";
$counter += 1;
}
}
Note, how much easier it is to see what's going on by simply assigning a few variables instead of trying to cram everything together. I can easily see what your parameters to your subroutine are suppose to be. If you called the subroutine with the incorrect parameter order, you could easily spot it. Also notice I broke out $counter % $array_size and assigned that to a variable too. Suddenly, it's obvious what I'm trying to get out of it.
However, I can't see where you're using the $line you're getting with getline. Did I miss something?
By the way, I could have done this without referencing the array in the while loop too:
sub printElements {
my file_handle = shift;
my $cities = shift; # This is an array reference!
my $counter;
my $array_size = #{ $cities }; # I need to deref to get an array
while ( my $line = $file_handle->getline and $counter < 1000 ) {
chomp $line;
my $city_number = $counter % $array_size;
print $cities->[$city_number]. "\n"; # That's it!
$counter += 1;
}
}
See how that -> syntax makes it easy to see that $cities is a reference that points to an array? A lot cleaner and easier to understand than ${$cities}[$city_number].
This code wouldn't actually compile.
print #{$_[1][($counter)%$arraySize];
It probably wants to be
print $_[1]->[($counter)%$arraySize];
after you fix arraySize.
If the result is somehow a pointer to an array then
print "#{$_[1]->[($counter)%$arraySize]}";
I figured how to solve my #1 problem (still looking for help on my #2 if anyone can).
I changed
my $arraySize = scalar $_[1];
to
my $arraySize = #{$_[1]};
And my second print statement is printing the way I want.
It seems that scalar $_[1] was taking the memory address of the array and I was moding against this allowing my $counter to go way beyond the number of elements in the array.
References confuse me too! I always like to dereference them as soon as possible. This works for me:
sub printElements{
my $counter = 0;
my $fh = $_[0];
my #array = #{$_[1]};
my $arraySize = scalar #array;
# Prints fine!!!
print #array[($counter)%$arraySize];
while ((my $line = $fh->getline()) && $counter < 1000){
#Doesn't print. Generates the above error
print #array[($counter)%$arraySize];
$counter += 1;
}
}
I'm sure someone else could explain in the comments why they think working with the reference is a better way (please do), but under the mantra of "keep it simple", I don't like working with them. Probably because I was never a C programmer...
Array #p is a multiline array, e.g. $p[1] is the second line.
This code will explain what I want:
$size=#p; # line number of array #p
for($i=0; $i<$size; $i++)
{
#p{$i}= split(/ +/,$p[$i]);
}
I want the result should be like this:
#p0 = $p[0] first line of array #p goes to array #p0;
#p1 = $p[1] second line of array #p goes to array #p1;
...
...
and so on.
But above code does not work, how can I do it?
It is a bad idea to dynamically generate variable names.
I suggest the best solution here is to convert each line in your #p array to an array of fields.
Lets suppose you have a better name for #p, say #lines. Then you can write
my #lines = map [ split ], <$fh>;
to read in all the lines from the file handle $fh and split them on whitespace. The first field of the first line is then $lines[0][0]. The third field of the first line is $lines[0][2] etc.
First, the syntax #p{$i} accesses the entry with the key $i in a hash %p, and returns it in list context. I don't think you meant that. use strict; use warnings; to get warned about undeclared variables.
You can declare variables with my, e.g. my #p; or my $size = #p;
Creating variable names on the fly is possible, but a bad practice. The good thing is that we don't need to: Perl has references. A reference to an array allows us to nest arrays, e.g.
my #AoA = (
[1, 2, 3],
["a", "b"],
);
say $AoA[0][1]; # 2
say $AoA[1][0]; # a
We can create an array reference by using brackets, e.g. [ #array ], or via the reference operator \:
my #inner_array = (1 .. 3);
my #other_inner = ("a", "b");
my #AoA = (\#inner_array, \#other_array);
But careful: the array references still point to the same array as the original names, thus
push #other_inner, "c";
also updates the entry in #AoA:
say $AoA[1][2]; # c
Translated to your problem this means that you want:
my #pn;
for (#p) {
push #pn, [ split /[ ]+/ ];
}
There are many other ways to express this, e.g.
my #pn = map [ split /[ ]+/ ], #p;
or
my #pn;
for my $i ( 0 .. $#p ) {
$pn[$i] = [ split /[ ]+/, $p[$i] ];
}
To learn more about references, read
perlreftut,
perldsc, and
perlref.
I've looked through several threads on websites including this one to try and understand why I am getting an undeclared variable error for my usage of my $line . Each element of the #lines array is an array of strings.
The error is in line 25 and 27 with the $line[$count] statement
use strict;
use warnings;
my #lines;
my #sizes;
# read input from stdin file into 2d array
while(<>)
{
push(#lines, my #tokens = split(/\s+/, $_));
}
# search through each array for largest sizes in
# corresponding elements
for (my $count = 0; $count <= 5; $count++)
{
push(#sizes, 0);
foreach my $line (#lines)
{
if(length($line[$count])>$sizes[$count])
{
$sizes[$count] = length($line[$count]);
}
}
}
I can post the full code if it is necessary, but I am pretty sure the error must be in here somewhere.
The problem is here:
push(#lines, my #tokens = split(/\s+/, $_));
Pushing one array into another just adds all elements to the first array. So you are making a really long one dimensional array.
To fix this, use brackets to make an array reference:
push #lines, [ split(/\s+/, $_) ]; #No need for a temp variable.
Also, to access the array reference, you have to de-reference it. Both of these syntaxes are options:
${$line}[$count];
$line->[$count];
I think the second syntax is more readable.
Update: Also, you could simplify your code if you keep track of the longest lengths while you go through the file:
use strict;
use warnings;
use List::Util qw/max/;
my #lines;
my #sizes = (0)x6;
while(<>)
{
push #lines, [ my #tokens = split ];
#sizes = map { max ( length($tokens[$_]), $sizes[$_] ) } 0..$#tokens;
}
Note: The Data::Dumper core module is an invaluable tool when working with complex data structures in Perl.
use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper #lines;
This will print out the complete structure of whatever variable you give it. That way you can see if you actually created what you thought you did.