Why is file being slurped in instead of line by line?

[Grey Fox]

Hello esteemed Monks of perl
I am being stumped on why my data is being slurped in all at once instead of line by line. I am trying to pull out only the name and id number, but my array is being loaded with the entire file. Also do I need to clear the array after each record read. I know it must be something simple because I've been staring at it for an hour.
Thanks, for your wisdom

#!/prod/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

undef $/;
my @data;
my $counter = 0;


while (my $line = <DATA>) {
  @data = split (/\t/, $line);
  print Dumper \@data;
  $counter = $counter+1;
  print "$counter, $data[11], $data[12]\n";

}  


__DATA__
LIMITS    LIMITS1    LIMITS2    LIMITS3    LIMITS4    LIMITS5    LIMIT
+S6    LIMITS7    UPDATEDATE    STEP2    DESC2    APPR2    APPRID2    
+OWNR2    OWNRID2
Limits    less than $1K    $1K-50K    $50k-$250K    more than $250K   
+ $250K-$1M    $1M-$5M    more than $5M    8/16/2006 2:14:00.000 PM   
+ 111111    Cost Center 1    Stien, Franklin N    000204    Stien, Fra
+nklin N    000204
Limits    less than $1K    $1K-50K    $50k-$250K    more than $250K   
+ $250K-$1M    $1M-$5M    more than $5M    8/16/2006 2:14:00.000 PM   
+ 222222    Cost Center 2    Bear, Izzy    000598    Bear, Izzy    000
+598
Limits    less than $1K    $1K-50K    $50k-$250K    more than $250K   
+ $250K-$1M    $1M-$5M    more than $5M    8/16/2006 2:14:00.000 PM   
+ 333333    Cost Center 3    Bear, Fozzy    000485    Davis, Sammy    
+000404    
Limits    less than $1K    $1K-50K    $50k-$250K    more than $250K   
+ $250K-$1M    $1M-$5M    more than $5M    8/16/2006 2:14:00.000 PM   
+ 444444    Cost Center 4    Frog, Kermit T    000990    Frog, Kermit 
+T    000990    
Limits    less than $1K    $1K-50K    $50k-$250K    more than $250K   
+ $250K-$1M    $1M-$5M    more than $5M    8/16/2006 2:14:00.000 PM   
+ 555555    Cost Center 5    Cleavland, Grover    000563    Cleavland,
+ Grover    000563

[Tanktalus]

It's because you're undefing $/. That's what the perl runtime uses to determine the line-break character (or string). (Well, technically, line-end string, but let's not get carried away.) Comment out that line, and you'll get what you expect.

If you need it for other things, you should localise your changes - see local. e.g.:

{
  # I want to slurp here.
  local $/;
  # sluuuuuuuurrrrrp...
}
# $/ is back to normal here.

[Grey Fox]

Thanks; That's what I get for stealing code from something else I had done where I wanted to get rid of the line feed.
I had a teacher once who used to say. If you can't find something in 5 minutes it is probably a stupid mistake (ie a missing ; or something).

[ahmad]

Hello ,

To make your code works fine ,

1. remove "undef $/;" line ... which makes the whloe data as one line ( removes line sperator )

2. remove "my @data;" from the top ... and declare it inside the loop ... which means ... it re-assigned a new data for each loop like

my @data = split (/\t/, $line);

HTH

[zshzn]

Point #2 is not necessary to his issue, nor will it actually fix a problem in his code execution. That already "works fine", if not optimally.

[GrandFather]

ahmad's point is however a good one. It is generally good practice to limit the scope of variables as far as is reasonable. It reduces the chance that a variable will be inadvertantly modified and the purpose of the variable is generally clearer.