variable type or conversion or something

[HaroldMcF]

I'm pulling information from a text file into an array and that works well. The problem is that I need to add two of those items together. It appears that it is treating them as strings or something because it will not add them together. Instead of returning a result it prints a zero.

Is there something to convert text to integer or something like that? Even if it converts it to a number so I can add them and then returns it to the array as a string that is fine, but I need to be able to add them somehow.

 

[icrf]

Perl does all of that automatically depending on context, so it should work without any effort. Can you post the problematic code? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...but I'm just a C man trying to see the light

 

[HaroldMcF]

Here is some of the relevant code:
The array @thirdpass contains each line of an input file where the fields are separated by a caret.
So, I bring each line in and parse based on the caret.
I then have some nested "if" statements to determine what value should be assigned to a particular element in the array @acctset. The result that I am seeking is that sometimes there are several lines of input that have the same account number. When that is the case I need to add the values.
So, what I tried was changing the line "$acctset[2] = $pd2;" to "$acctset[2] = $acctset[2] + $pd2". This returned a zero. Originally it returned the correct value.


foreach $inline (@thirdpass)
{
($accnoin, $acdescin, $yearin, $fdesigin, $begbalin, $pd1, $pd2, $pd3, $pd4, $pd5, $pd6, $pd7, $pd8, $pd9, $pd10, $pd11, $pd12) = split(/\^/, $inline);


if($acctno1 eq $accnoin) #Check to see if account no is the same as prior line
{
if($col2yr eq $yearin && $col2des eq $fdesigin)
{
if($col2pd eq "pd1&quot
{
$acctset[2] = $pd1;
}
if($col2pd eq "pd2&quot
{
$acctset[2] = $pd2;
}
.
.
.

Hope that helps in figuring out the problem.

 

[icrf]

It might be a problem with the array element being defined the first time in (but it shouldn't, I think undef in numeric context returns zero). Might try something like this:

$acctset[2] = (defined($acctset[2])) ? ($acctset[2] + $pd2) : ($pd2);

It tests if it's defined, and if it is, adds it to what's there, and if not, just sets it to $pd2. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...but I'm just a C man trying to see the light