=head1 NAME
-perlfaq5 - Files and Formats ($Revision: 1.9 $, $Date: 2002/02/11 19:30:21 $)
+perlfaq5 - Files and Formats ($Revision: 1.15 $, $Date: 2002/04/12 02:02:05 $)
=head1 DESCRIPTION
=head2 How can I output my numbers with commas added?
-This one will do it for you:
+This one from Benjamin Goldberg will do it for you:
- sub commify {
- my $number = shift;
- 1 while ($number =~ s/^([-+]?\d+)(\d{3})/$1,$2/);
- return $number;
- }
-
- $n = 23659019423.2331;
- print "GOT: ", commify($n), "\n";
-
- GOT: 23,659,019,423.2331
-
-You can't just:
-
- s/^([-+]?\d+)(\d{3})/$1,$2/g;
+ s/(^[-+]?\d+?(?=(?>(?:\d{3})+)(?!\d))|\G\d{3}(?=\d))/$1,/g;
-because you have to put the comma in and then recalculate your
-position.
+or written verbosely:
-Alternatively, this code commifies all numbers in a line regardless of
-whether they have decimal portions, are preceded by + or -, or
-whatever:
-
- # from Andrew Johnson <ajohnson@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca>
- sub commify {
- my $input = shift;
- $input = reverse $input;
- $input =~ s<(\d\d\d)(?=\d)(?!\d*\.)><$1,>g;
- return scalar reverse $input;
- }
+ s/(
+ ^[-+]? # beginning of number.
+ \d{1,3}? # first digits before first comma
+ (?= # followed by, (but not included in the match) :
+ (?>(?:\d{3})+) # some positive multiple of three digits.
+ (?!\d) # an *exact* multiple, not x * 3 + 1 or whatever.
+ )
+ | # or:
+ \G\d{3} # after the last group, get three digits
+ (?=\d) # but they have to have more digits after them.
+ )/$1,/xg;
=head2 How can I translate tildes (~) in a filename?
Normally perl ignores trailing blanks in filenames, and interprets
certain leading characters (or a trailing "|") to mean something
-special. To avoid this, you might want to use a routine like the one below.
-It turns incomplete pathnames into explicit relative ones, and tacks a
-trailing null byte on the name to make perl leave it alone:
-
- sub safe_filename {
- local $_ = shift;
- s#^([^./])#./$1#;
- $_ .= "\0";
- return $_;
- }
+special.
- $badpath = "<<<something really wicked ";
- $fn = safe_filename($badpath");
- open(FH, "> $fn") or "couldn't open $badpath: $!";
+The three argument form of open() lets you specify the mode
+separately from the filename. The open() function treats
+special mode characters and whitespace in the filename as
+literals
-This assumes that you are using POSIX (portable operating systems
-interface) paths. If you are on a closed, non-portable, proprietary
-system, you may have to adjust the C<"./"> above.
+ open FILE, "<", " file "; # filename is " file "
+ open FILE, ">", ">file"; # filename is ">file"
-It would be a lot clearer to use sysopen(), though:
+It may be a lot clearer to use sysopen(), though:
use Fcntl;
$badpath = "<<<something really wicked ";
sysopen (FH, $badpath, O_WRONLY | O_CREAT | O_TRUNC)
or die "can't open $badpath: $!";
-For more information, see also the new L<perlopentut> if you have it
-(new for 5.6).
-
=head2 How can I reliably rename a file?
If your operating system supports a proper mv(1) utility or its functional
=head2 How do I get a file's timestamp in perl?
-If you want to retrieve the time at which the file was last read,
-written, or had its meta-data (owner, etc) changed, you use the B<-M>,
-B<-A>, or B<-C> file test operations as documented in L<perlfunc>. These
-retrieve the age of the file (measured against the start-time of your
-program) in days as a floating point number. To retrieve the "raw"
-time in seconds since the epoch, you would call the stat function,
-then use localtime(), gmtime(), or POSIX::strftime() to convert this
-into human-readable form.
+If you want to retrieve the time at which the file was last
+read, written, or had its meta-data (owner, etc) changed,
+you use the B<-M>, B<-A>, or B<-C> file test operations as
+documented in L<perlfunc>. These retrieve the age of the
+file (measured against the start-time of your program) in
+days as a floating point number. Some platforms may not have
+all of these times. See L<perlport> for details. To
+retrieve the "raw" time in seconds since the epoch, you
+would call the stat function, then use localtime(),
+gmtime(), or POSIX::strftime() to convert this into
+human-readable form.
Here's an example:
@lines = <INPUT>;
-you should think long and hard about why you need everything loaded
-at once. It's just not a scalable solution. You might also find it
-more fun to use the standard DB_File module's $DB_RECNO bindings,
-which allow you to tie an array to a file so that accessing an element
-the array actually accesses the corresponding line in the file.
-
-On very rare occasion, you may have an algorithm that demands that
-the entire file be in memory at once as one scalar. The simplest solution
-to that is
-
- $var = `cat $file`;
-
-Being in scalar context, you get the whole thing. In list context,
-you'd get a list of all the lines:
+you should think long and hard about why you need everything loaded at
+once. It's just not a scalable solution. You might also find it more
+fun to use the standard Tie::File module, or the DB_File module's
+$DB_RECNO bindings, which allow you to tie an array to a file so that
+accessing an element the array actually accesses the corresponding
+line in the file.
- @lines = `cat $file`;
-
-This tiny but expedient solution is neat, clean, and portable to
-all systems on which decent tools have been installed. For those
-who prefer not to use the toolbox, you can of course read the file
-manually, although this makes for more complicated code.
+You can read the entire filehandle contents into a scalar.
{
local(*INPUT, $/);
$var = do { local $/; <INPUT> };
+For ordinary files you can also use the read function.
+
+ read( INPUT, $var, -s INPUT );
+
+The third argument tests the byte size of the data on the INPUT filehandle
+and reads that many bytes into the buffer $var.
+
=head2 How can I read in a file by paragraphs?
Use the C<$/> variable (see L<perlvar> for details). You can either