Re: How to get contents from an array inside a hash

[GrandFather]

There are quite a few bugs happily tucked away in that code. A few coding techniques will help find many of them:

1. Remove cruft. If you don't use the contents of a variable remove it ($cnt_all_fields etc.). That doesn't fix bugs, but it gives them fewer places to hide.
2. Declare variables in the smallest scope you can. Don't use globals if you can possibly avoid them. @chars is an interesting case in point and probably relates to a bug.
3. Use named variables rather than arrays. That doesn't fix bugs either, but makes code intent more obvious. @fields is the first example - use my ($key, $pos, $len, $use) = split ',', $line; instead.
4. Don't invent your own variant of undef. Perl already has its own version and can help spot bugs for you if you use it with warnings on. Variables are undef by default and arrays and hashes are empty by default so you don't need to set them to that state. See the various layout variables for example.
5. Don't reuse variable names for different variable types - that way madness lies. Example: @layout_value and $layout_value. Perl helps catch more bugs if you avoid overloaded names and the code is easier to understand.
6. Perl is a real wizz at string handling. You should almost never need to loop over a string and pull characters out one by one! It's slow and harder than it needs to be to understand.

Ok, that's enough to be going on with. Here's a somewhat "cleaned up" version of your code. It probably still doesn't work as you want, but at least a few gremlins have been shaken loose:

use strict;
use warnings;

use List::MoreUtils qw{ any };

my $cnt_records_read = 0;

my $layout = <<'LAY';
StudentLastName,180,30,Y,,Y
StudentFirstName,210,30,N,,Y
StudentMiddleName,240,30,N,,
DateOfBirth,270,8,Y,,Y
Gender,278,2,Y,,Y
Grade,280,3,Y,,
LAY

my %layout;
my @params = qw(Name Position Length);

open my $layoutFile, '<', \$layout;

while (defined (my $line = <$layoutFile>)) {
    chomp $line;
    my ($name, $pos, $len, $use) = split ",", $line;

    next if $use ne "Y";
    @{$layout{$name}}{@params} = ($name, $pos - 1, $len);
}

close $layoutFile;

my @records;
my @fieldNames = sort keys %layout;

while (my $line = <DATA>) {
    push @records, {};

    for my $param (@fieldNames) {
        my $field = $layout{$param};
        my $data = substr $line, $field->{Position}, $field->{Length};

        $records[-1]{$param} = $data;
    }
}

for my $record (@records) {
    for my $name (@fieldNames) {
        printf "%-30s %8s %6s %s\n", @{$layout{$name}}{@params},
            $record->{$name};
    }
}

__DATA__
 111E2000                                                             
+           111E2000                                                  
+                    201457660112567001  EP015F                       
+ SSHS                                                        12232006
+01120      00   0    000   0         111        0   0                
+      sumsoc12S   EPEN SS HS                                         
+   NNNNNNNNNN                           0000091323                   
+   Y
 111E2000                                                             
+           111E2000                                                  
+                    201457660212567002  EP025F                       
+ SSHS                                                        12232006
+01120      00   0    000   0         111        0   0                
+      sumsoc12S   EPEN SS HS                                         
+   NNNNNNNNNN                           0000091324                   
+   Y
 111E2000                                                             
+           111E2000                                                  
+                    201457660312567003  EP035F                       
+ SSHS                                                        12232006
+01120      00   0    000   0         111        0   0                
+      sumsoc12S   EPEN SS HS                                         
+   NNNNNNNNNN                           0000091325                   
+   Y

which prints:

DateOfBirth                         269      8 12232006
Gender                              277      2 01
Grade                               279      3 120
StudentLastName                     179     30 EP015F                 
+       
DateOfBirth                         269      8 12232006
Gender                              277      2 01
Grade                               279      3 120
StudentLastName                     179     30 EP025F                 
+       
DateOfBirth                         269      8 12232006
Gender                              277      2 01
Grade                               279      3 120
StudentLastName                     179     30 EP035F