Perl - reading file into multidimension array

Question

I am hoping someone can assist me, I am fairly new to Perl, I have looked and found some sample scripts but cannot get this to work.

I have input file that is generated by a SQL query:

0050560A49871EEBAE9D90FC8C9E1808         d:\                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              060606                                           812
aaaaemsmf61wbjmqmiaaezroku2u3            d:\                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              060606                                           817
aaaaemsmf61wbjmqmiaaezroku2u3            d:\                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              060606                                           817
aaaacodrditwbjvwwqaaaaboku2u3            d:\                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              060606                                           820
aaaacodrditwbjvwwqaaaaboku2u3            d:\                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              060606                                           820

(5 rows affected)

Using the following code I am trying to read the contents into a multidimensional array :

my $data;
my $fields = {};
read_folder();
for ($i = 0; $i < $input_file_number; $i++){
    my $file =  "./extracted/$sql_scripts[$i]";
    printf "file = $sql_scripts[$i]\n";
    open($data, '<:encoding(UTF-8)',$file) or die "Could not open '$file' $!\n";

    while (<$data>)
    {
        push @fields, [split/s+/];
    }
    print Dumper( @fields ), "\n\n"; 
}

However when I user the print Dumper command it shows that each line from the file has been put into the array but has not split the lines when a space occurs, am i using the push @fields, [split/s+/]; command wrong ? In additon I would like to remove the whitespace betweeen each value on the line, when added to the array.

Any help will be much appricated

Answer 1

The regex pattern s+ matches one or more s, so the following is wrong:

push @fields, [ split /s+/ ];    # Short for: `split /s+/, $_, -1`

You want \s+: one or more whitespace character.

push @fields, [ split /\s+/ ];   # Short for: `split /\s+/, $_, -1`

Alternatively, you could pass a single space to split. This is a treated specially, and it's almost identical to using \s+. The only difference is that passing a single space causes the split to ignores leading whitespace in the input.

push @fields, [ split ];         # Short for: `split " ", $_, -1`

Answer 2

Managed to figure it out, by changing the line

push @fields, [split/s+/];

to

push @fields,  [split " "];

I accomplish both the data being split by the values, and also the whitespace is removed