[SOLVED]substitution using hash issue

[jaffinito34]

Hello monks, I'm writing a script that will simply take in a given date in the format of (DD/Mon/YYYY) where the month is entered as a 3 letters. I'm trying to convert the letters into its corresponding number using a hash but I'm having some difficulty and I know this is a simple fix but I can't seem to figure it out. Check out the code below.

#! /usr/bin/perl


print "Enter date: ";
chomp($date = <STDIN>);

($day,$month,$year) = split '/', $date;
print "$day $month $year\n";


%dates = (
    'Jan' => 01,'Feb' => 02,'Mar' => 03,'Apr' => 04,'May' => 05,'Jun' 
+=> 06,
    'Jul' => 07,'Aug' => 08,'Sep' => 09,'Oct' => 10,'Nov' => 11,'Dec' 
+=> 12,
);


foreach $char ($month){
    $char =~ s/.../$dates{$month}/;
}

I keep getting compilation errors, not sure why though. Any help is appreciated.

[brx]

1. use strict; This is a good friend.
2. Declare your variables:  my %dates = ...
3. 01 is an octal number (one). 08 is an illegal number representation. What you want is text, so write text with quotes: my %dates = ( 'Jan' => '01', #...
4. $dates{'Dec'} contains "12". So, forget regex substitution: print "$day $dates{$month} $year\n";
5. There is a lot of caveats with dates. Consider well known CPAN modules like DateTime...

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
my %dates = (   
    'Jan' => '01',
    'Feb' => '02',
    'Mar' => '03',
    'Apr' => '04',
    'May' => '05',
    'Jun' => '06',
    'Jul' => '07',
    'Aug' => '08',
    'Sep' => '09',
    'Oct' => '10',
    'Nov' => '11',
    'Dec' => '12',
);

my $date = "30/Feb/2013";
my ($day,$month,$year) = split '/', $date;
print "$day $dates{$month} $year\n";

[choroba]

No substitution is required, a hash is all you need:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;

print "Enter date: ";
chomp(my $date = <STDIN>);

my ($day, $month, $year) = split '/', $date;
print "$day $month $year\n";

my $m;
my %dates = map { $_, sprintf '%02d', ++$m }
                qw/Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec/;

my $month_n = $dates{$month};
print "$day $month_n $year\n";

[jaffinito34]

The program seemed to run but got some errors after entering the date, not sure what they mean though.

Enter date: 23 Oct 2222
Use of uninitialized value $month in concatenation (.) or string at ./
+dateWork line 9, <STDIN> line 1.
Use of uninitialized value $year in concatenation (.) or string at ./d
+ateWork line 9, <STDIN> line 1.
23 Oct 2222  
Use of uninitialized value $month in hash element at ./dateWork line 1
+5, <STDIN> line 1.
Use of uninitialized value $month_n in concatenation (.) or string at 
+./dateWork line 16, <STDIN> line 1.
Use of uninitialized value $year in concatenation (.) or string at ./d
+ateWork line 16, <STDIN> line 1.
23 Oct 2222

[choroba]

You should enter the date in the specified format.

[brap]

Hi jaffinito34,

Looks like the month numbers are being interpreted as octal. Drop the leading zeroes, especially for 'Aug' and 'Sep'.

'Jan' => 1, ...

That will at least get your program running.

[jaffinito34]

Got compilation errors.

syntax error at ./dateWork line 13, near "+=>"
Execution of ./dateWork aborted due to compilation errors.

[jaffinito34]

Sorry it works, but when I try to print the updated $month, it just prints a blank line.

[Anonymous Monk]

What errors ? ( How do I post a question effectively? , How (Not) To Ask A Question )

Your shebang looks broken

see also Basic debugging checklist and brian's Guide to Solving Any Perl Problem

[jaffinito34]

When the script is run in the terminal, I get this.

syntax error at ./dateWork line 13, near "+=>"
Illegal octal digit '8' at ./dateWork line 14, at end of line
Illegal octal digit '9' at ./dateWork line 14, at end of line
Execution of ./dateWork aborted due to compilation errors.