Padding with zeroes fails

[Kickstart]

Can anyone tell me why this doesn't work? I'm a bit lost.

use strict;
use diagnostics;

# ScheduleA has the format of:
# ,,,,,,,MultiPlex MP-7 Plan.pdf.sit
# ,,,,,,,MultiPlex S2.1 Main Plan.S.sit. . .
# ,,,,,,,MultiPlex S2.2 Upper PlanS.sit. . .
# ,,,,,,,MultiPlex S2.3 Roof Plan.S.sit. . .
# 1/24/2000,906,907,Johnston Sport Architecture Inc.,Lorne Mack
# 1/21/2000,908,908,Johnston Sport Architecture Inc.,Lorne Mack
# 1/19/2000,909,911,Johnston Sport Architecture Inc.,Lorne Mack
# ,,,,,,,Whitehorse FTP Memo.pdf
# ,,,,,,,1122 Whitehorse FTP 6.0/95


open (CSVFILE, "<schedulea.csv") or die "Can't open schedulea.csv";

while (<CSVFILE>) {
    if ($_ =~ /(^.*?),(\d+),(\d+),(.*?$)/) {
        $2 =~ ('0' x (6 - length($2))) . $2;
        $3 =~ ('0' x (6 - length($3))) . $3;
        print "$1,$2,$3,$4\n";
    }
    else {
        print $_;
    }
}

Thanks!

Kickstart

[Ovid]

You really shouldn't try to parse CSV data by hand. Having a quoted field with an embedded comma will quickly make your life miserable. If you create a regex which will accurately parse CSV data, then it's going to be less than pleasant to maintain. Try something like Text::CSV_XS:

use strict;
use Text::CSV_XS;

my $csv = Text::CSV->new;
my $csv_file = 'schedulea.csv';

open CSVFILE, "< $csv_file" or die "Can't open $csv_file for reading: 
+$!";

while (<CSVFILE>) {
    my $status  = $csv->parse($_);
    if ( $status ) {
        my @columns = $csv->fields();
        # do stuff with columns
    } else {
        my $bad_argument = $csv->error_input();
        # do stuff with the error
    }
}

Cheers,
Ovid

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[miyagawa]

You don't need =~ here. just use = instead. And consider using sprintf also.

--
Tatsuhiko Miyagawa
[e-mail]

[Kickstart]

Thanks, that was definitely the first error...the second came up when I attempted to assign other values to the read-only variables ($2 and $3)...both fixed, worked like a charm. Unfortunately this is just a one-of, so I didn't want to write a big multi-use script. Kickstart