Why does my Perl script say "Can't call method parse on an undefined value"? - perl

Question

I am new to Perl and still trying to figure out how to code in this language.
I am currently trying to split a long single string of csv into multiple lines.
Data example
a,b,c<br />x,y,x<br />
which I so far have manage to split up, adding in quotes, to add into a CSV file again later on:
"a,b,c""x,y,z"
By having the quotes it just signifies which sets of CSV are together as such.
The problem I am having is that when I try and create a CSV file, passing in data in a string i am getting an error
"Can't call method "parse" on an undefined variable.
When I print out the string which I am passing in, it is defined and holds data. I am hoping that this is something simple which I am doing wrong through lack of experience.
The CSV code which I am using is:
use warnings;
use Text::CSV;
use Data::Dumper;
use constant debug => 0;
use Text::CSV;
print "Running CSV editor......\n";
#my $csv = Text::CSV->new({ sep_char => ',' });
my $file = $ARGV[0] or die "Need to get CSV file on the command line\n";
my $fileextension = substr($file, -4);
#If the file is a CSV file then read in the file.
if ($fileextension =~ m/csv/i)
{
print "Reading and formating: $ARGV[0] \n";
open(my $data, '<', $file) or die "Could not open '$file' $!\n";
my #fields;
my $testline;
my $line;
while ($line = <$data>)
{
#Clears the white space at the end of the line.
chomp $line;
#Splits the line up and removes the <br />.
$testline = join "\" \" ", split qr{<br\s?/>}, $line;
#my $newStr = join $/, #lines;
#print $newStr;
my $q1 = "\"";
$testline = join "", $q1,$testline,$q1;
print "\n printing testline: \n $testline \n";
}
$input_string = $testline;
print "\n Testing input string line:\n $input_string";
if ($csv->parse ($input_string))
{
my #field = $csv->fields;
foreach my $col (0 .. $#field) {
my $quo = $csv->is_binary ($col) ? $csv->{quote_char} : "";
printf "%2d: %s%s%s\n", $col, $quo, $field[$col], $quo;#
}
}
else
{
print STDERR "parse () failed on argument: ",
$csv->error_input, "\n";
$csv->error_diag ();
}
#print $_,$/ for #lines;
print "\n Finished reading and formating: $ARGV[0] \n";
}else
{
print "Error: File is not a CSV file\n"
}

Answer 1

You did not create a Text::CSV object, but you try to use it.
"Can't call method "parse" on an undefined variable
This means that your $csv is not there, thus it does not have a method called parse. Simply create a Text::CSV object first, at the top of your code below all the use lines.
my $csv = Text::CSV->new;
Pleae take a look at the CPAN documentation of Text::CSV.
Also, did I mention you should use strict?