concatenation problems

[Graziella]

Hi,

I really need some help with a concatenation problem I am having.
I have tried all possible ways of concatenating two strings. For instance, I am trying to concatenate
$old = "1844" and $new = "1866"
by the expression ":" (or any other expression)

I have tried:
$joined_pattern = $old.":".$new;
$joined_pattern = join ":", $old, $new;
$old .= ":".$new;
The result is
:18441860
with the expression ":" first, and $old and $new attached to the other. ?!?!?!

The input file looks like this:
1870 South(\s|_)African?
1400 1860
1400 1844
where 1870 and 1400 are id numbers

The code is this:
---------------
#!/usr/bin/perl
my($doc) = $ARGV[0];
my(%ID2patterns) = ();


open (P_FILE, "<$doc") || die "Can't open $doc\n";
while(<P_FILE>){
my ($line) = ($_);
chomp($line);

my($id, $pattern) = ($line =~ /^(\d+)\s+(.*)/);
if (!exists ($ID2patterns{$id}) ) {
$ID2patterns{$id} = $pattern;
} else {

$old = $ID2patterns{$id};
$new = $pattern;
$joined_pattern = $old.":".$new;
$ID2patterns{$id} = $joined_pattern;
print "DOPO $joined_pattern\n";
undef $old, $new;

}
}
close(P_FILE);

 

[PaulTEG]

$joined_pattern = $old.":".$new;
print "$joined_pattern\n":

--Paul

cigless ...

 

[KevinADC]

I tested your code and it prints:

DOPO 1844:1866

 

[Graziella]

Yes, now it works in the small test code I posted here, but it does not in the real code.
I wonder whether it has something to do with "print" in perl 5.8 which I am using.

Grazia

 

[PaulTEG]

I doubt if has anything to do with print

$old="1844";
$new="1766";

$joined_pattern = $old.":".$new;
print "$joined_pattern\n";
$joined_pattern = join ":", $old, $new;
print "$joined_pattern\n";
$old .= ":".$new;
print "$old\n";

prints

1844:1766
1844:1766
1844:1766

on Activestate 5.8.2
HTH
--Paul

cigless ...

 

[Graziella]

I got it.
It has to do with the encoding of the input file.
I copied it into a text .txt file and had no problems. Perl did what it was expected to do.

I do not know exactly what kind of encoding problems it had.

Thank you,

Grazia