Incrementing Form inputs

[damian]

hi guys, i have this big project that accepts user inputs from an html form page. my problem is that i have 243 text inputs and my script is ovekilling with something like this. print FH "$FORM{item1}\t$FORM{qty1}\n" if $FORM{qty1}; print FH "$FORM{item2}\t$FORM{qty2}\n" if $FORM{qty2}; print FH "$FORM{item3}\t$FORM{qty3}\n" if $FORM{qty3}; up to .... print FH "$FORM{item243}\t$FORM{qty243}\n" if $FORM{qty243}; would you image what a waste of time coding 243 FORM inputs. is there a shortcut way for this like this one.... for ($i=1;$i<=243;$i++) { FH "$FORM{item$i++}\t$FORM{qty$i++}\n" if $FORM{qty$i++}; } but that won't work.... i am beginning to go balistic here.. help please.

[athomason]

Hash keys are strings, so all you need to do is concatenate the 'item' or 'qty' with your index. The postincrements ('++') you have within the keys are redundant and will give you an error anyhow. So then we could clean your code up:

for my $i ($i=1; $i<=243; $i++) {
  print FH "$FORM{'item' . $i}\t$FORM{'qty' . $i}\n"
    if $FORM{'qty' . $i};
}

Though I'd be more likely use printf and an array slice for clarity in this case:

for (1..243) {
  printf FH "%s\t%s\n", $FORM{"item${i}"}, $FORM{"qty${i}"}
    if $FORM{"qty${i}"};
}

The braces aren't strictly necessary here, but will prevent confusion in the future if you need to append a static string after the interpolated variable.

[agoth]

Or if youre happy using $_ why not :

for (1..243) {
    print FH qq($FORM{"item$_"}\t$FORM{"qty$_"}\n) if $FORM{"qty$_"};
}