Dumping a complete array in a file?

[Tve]

I use perl mainly for opening, closing and reading files...

My question is about writing to a file.

In other languages, it is possible to dump a complete array in a file. Translated to perl, it could look like this

@test = qw(a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m);
open (OUTFILE,">c:/test.txt&quot or die "Error $f_file: $!";
dump ( OUTFILE,@test);


I know I could make a loop and print to the file, like:

foreach $line (@test) {
print OUTFILE "$line";
}


but this seems very cumbersom.

Does anyone know if something like the first syntax(blue) exists?

Thierry

 

[luciddream]

you can just print the array to the filehandle.

open (FILE, ">txt.txt"
print FILE @array;
close FILE;

will dump the array into the file.
but, it doesn't separate the items in the array.

so with the array from your example, you would end up with a line like this:

abcdefghijklm.

if you want each one delimited by something you can always join() the array with whatever delimeter you like.

 

[Tve]

Thanks for your tip.

The main advantage of the array is that the file to which I write is only open for a split second.

Thierry

 

[mbaranski]

Isn't there also a variable $@ or something that is the array seperator, that is it prints whatever this is set to between each element of the array?

Couldn't you set this to "\n" and print the filehandle to get one record / line?

Mike B.
Go Wolfpack!

 

[luciddream]

yeah, i forgot all about that.

its $"

you can set this to be the delimter of a list when printed.

$@ however is the special variable for the last eval error.

 

[MikeLacey]

don't you have to evaluate an array in double quotes to make use of $" ?

like this:

print FILE "@array";

I think that join() is quicker, but this is *real* easy.
Mike
michael.j.lacey@ntlworld.com