[Israel.pm] Another newbie question - Hashes

[Gaal Yahas]

On Thu, Feb 05, 2004 at 11:40:24AM +0000, Mikhael Goikhman wrote:
> On 05 Feb 2004 13:16:11 +0200, Gaal Yahas wrote:
> > 
> > If you're going for code that's easy for a beginner to grasp, this is
> > much clearer:
> > 
> >      while (<FILE>) {
> >          my($key, $value) = split /\s+/, $_, 2;
> >          $hash{$key} = $value;
> >      }
> 
> Gaal, Yuval Yaari already mentioned a bug in this code.
> I noticed this bug too when you posted, but didn't want to interfere. :)
> 
> <> returns a line (or lines in list context) with trailing "\n" in them.
> So, $value ends up with "\n" in it.
> 
> To fix this, one solution is to add chomp. Another solution is to remove
> the third argument from split (but you can't remove it in your original
> code that converts array to hash, you should use chomp there):
> 
>   my ($key, $value) = split /\s+/, $_;
> 
> Some sane file format checks should be added too to avoid other bugs.

I stand bug corrected!

And yet my points remain:
- $/ and a temporary var are better not used here, for several reasons.
- while() is more straightforward and more extensible, and certainly
  clearer for a beginner. The "sane file format checks" were what I was
  talking about.

-- 
Gaal Yahas <gaal at forum2.org>
http://gaal.livejournal.com/