Check for Blanks

[Geek8]

Hello,
I am trying to create a report that checks for populated values in certain positions of a fixed length record. If there is nothing in the string, then it increments a certain counter and if something exists in the string then it increments another counter. This is the code I have for that:

while (<INPUTFILE>) {
chomp;
my @record = unpack('x2 A1 x1309 A1 A1 A1 A1 A1 A1 A1 x11 A16',$_);


if ( $record[0] eq 'N'){
if ($record[8] eq &quot; &quot{
$no_cons++;
}
else{
$cons++;
}
}

The string is 16 bytes long and has been pulled by using unpack. I tested this out on a record that does not have anything populated for this string, and still got a increment as if it did. Am I doing this script incorrectly? Or does someone have any advice as to how I can avoid this? The values in the string IF it is populated are always different.

Thanks for any help.

Geek8

 

[PaulTEG]

What you're saying is

If the first part is 'N' then
if ninth part is &quot; &quot; then
increment $no_cons by 1
end if
else
increment $cons by 1
End if

Based on what you're saying I dont think its what you meant

Paul

It's important in life to always strike a happy medium, so if you see someone with a crystal ball, and a smile on their face ...

 

[Geek8]

Paul
This is pretty much what I am saying. Basically check for an empty string and then increment the no_cons counter. If there is something in the string then increment the cons counter. Both cases need to check for a &quot;N&quot; in the first part. What happenned in my test is that the first value would be a &quot;N&quot;, then there would be nothing in the string. Yet it would still update the cons counter. In that case it needs to update the no_cons counter.

Thanks.

 

[PaulTEG]

You mean

if ($record[0] eq 'N'){
  if ($record[8] eq

&quot; &quot;){
$no_cons++;
} else {
$cons++;
}
}[/code]

You're unpacking a single character into the ninth item of your array, so it'll always count 1. You need to differentiate between spaces and empty strings.

Try this

$count=0;
foreach $record (@record) {
 print "[".sprintf("%0.3d",$count)."][$record]\n";
 $count++;
}

HTH
Paul



It's important in life to always strike a happy medium, so if you see someone with a crystal ball, and a smile on their face ...

 

[Geek8]

Thanks Paul. That helped. I think I have it working now.


Geek