avoiding newlines when using system calls.

[Zecho]

A lot of what i've been writing in my attempts to learn perl have used
the `date` command. When i try to write it to a file as part
of a longer string it always causes a /n after it so I have been putting
it at the end of the line. Such as

$today = `date +%D`;
$reg_data = "$handle|$crpw|$first_name}|$last_name|$email_addy|0|$toda
+y";
open trf, ">/tmp/.$handle";
print trf $reg_data;
close trf;

This works fine but what if I want to use more than one instance of it and
keep it all on one line?? Secondly will every system call do this?

[dws]

Try   chomp($today = `date +%D`); or better, figure out how to to extract what you need from localtime(), and avoid the overhead of invoking another process.

[azatoth]

using chomp() will eliminate your newline woes. Try the following code and note the differences :

my $today = `date +%D`;
print $today;
chomp($today);
print $today;

Azatoth a.k.a Captain Whiplash

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[blakem]

First of all forking date is usually a bad idea... You should look into the Date::Calc or Date::Manip modules. Some people also like the strftime routine in the POSIX module

That said, if you want to remove the newline from the $today variable, you should use chomp.

chomp($today = `date +%D`);

-Blake

[Zecho]

Thanks very much.. The book Im reading to teach myself doesn't include anything about chomp so I had no idea where to look.

[BooK]

If you want to follow blakem advice and use the POSIX module, here is how to do it. There is no newline here, plus you don't fork an external process just to fetch the date.

use POSIX qw/ strftime /;           # standard module
$today = strftime("%D", localtime); # localtime in list context

You could even do it this other way, but be careful with embedded %-sign in your variables. That might bite you.

use POSIX qw/ strftime /;
open  trf, ">/tmp/.$handle";
print trf strftime("$handle|$crpw|$first_name|$last_name|$email_addy|0
+|%D", localtime);
close trf;

[Beatnik]

This ofcourse being kinda nitpicking... but may I suggest localtime ? Using shell calls to get the date in a certain format just seems plain kinky to me. Shell calls will not only slow ya down, Taint might freak on em (as it should) and it could break your script if (you don't have access|it's not present on the box).

Greetz
Beatnik
... Quidquid perl dictum sit, altum viditur.