Variable contains period in perl, but I don't want to concat - perl

Question

I am trying to create a hash from tabular data. One of the columns contain team names that are separated by .'s - for instance USA.APP.L2PES.
A sample line that will be split (| are delimiters):
http://10.x.x.x:8085/BINReport/servlet/Processing|2012/10/02 08:40:30|2015/03/10 16:00:42|nxcvapxxx_bin|Chandler|Linkpoint Connect|USA.APP.L2PES
And here is the code I'm using to split and arrange into a hash (found on another stack exchange comment).
my #records;
while (<$fh_OMDB>) {
my #fields = split /\s*\|\s*/, $_;
my %hash;
#hash{#headers} = #fields;
push #records, \%hash;
}
for my $record (#records) {
my $var = $record->{Arg04};
print $var;
}
However, whenever I try to print $var I get the error message
Use of uninitialized value $var in print at find_teams_v2.pl line 53,
line 2667.
I believe this is because the string contains a . and perl is trying to concat the values. How do I print the string as a literal?
Here is an output of Data dumper (only one of them, as there are a couple thousand output):
$VAR1 = {
'Arg01' => 'zionscatfdecs',
'Date Added' => '2013/08/06 10:30:04',
'URL' => 'https://zionscat.fdecs.com',
'Arg04
' => 'USA.FDFI.APP.TMECS2
',
'Date Updated' => '2013/08/06 10:30:04',
'Arg02' => 'Omaha',
'Arg03' => 'First Data eCustomer Service ()'
};
And the headers dump:
$VAR1 = 'URL';
$VAR2 = 'Date Added';
$VAR3 = 'Date Updated';
$VAR4 = 'Arg01';
$VAR5 = 'Arg02';
$VAR6 = 'Arg03';
$VAR7 = 'Arg04
';

Answer 1

Mocking up my own #headers it seems to work ok.
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
my #headers = qw ( mee mah mo mum
fee fi fo fum );
my $string =
q{http://10.x.x.x:8085/BINReport/servlet/Processing|2012/10/02 08:40:30|2015/03/10 16:00:42|nxcvapxxx_bin|Chandler|Linkpoint Connect|USA.APP.L2PES};
my #records;
my #fields = split /\s*\|\s*/, $string;
print join( "\n", #fields );
my %hash;
#hash{#headers} = #fields;
print Dumper \%hash;
push #records, \%hash;
foreach my $record (#records) {
my $var = $record ->{fo};
print $var,"\n";
}
This prints the string - with the dots - as expected. That's because each loop the hash looks like (with your sample data):
$VAR1 = {
'fi' => 'Linkpoint Connect',
'mo' => '2015/03/10 16:00:42',
'mum' => 'nxcvapxxx_bin',
'mee' => 'http://10.x.x.x:8085/BINReport/servlet/Processing',
'mah' => '2012/10/02 08:40:30',
'fee' => 'Chandler',
'fum' => undef,
'fo' => 'USA.APP.L2PES'
};
However, if my 'headers' row is shorter:
my #headers = qw ( mee mah mo mum );
I can reproduce your error:
Use of uninitialized value $var in print
That's because there's no {fo} element:
$VAR1 = {
'mo' => '2015/03/10 16:00:42',
'mee' => 'http://10.x.x.x:8085/BINReport/servlet/Processing',
'mum' => 'nxcvapxxx_bin',
'mah' => '2012/10/02 08:40:30'
};
So:
Make sure you have strict and warnings switched on.
check #headers is declared.
check #headers is actually long enough to match every field.
Running:
use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper \#headers;
Will tell you this.
And as noted in the comments above:
'Arg04
' => 'USA.FDFI.APP.TMECS2
{Arg04} doesn't exist, we have a newline. chomp your line before converting it into headers, (or just chomp #headers) and your code will work.
Note - you may also wish to chomp inside your while loop, because otherwise the last field will also include a newline. (Which may be undesired)

Answer 2

Using the Data::Dumper printouts showed that I had fewer header fields than existed, so that when I made the call to Arg04 it didn’t exist or made a reference to an undef field. Doing a chomp on the header array fixed the error message.