Perl substitution not working

[Anonymous Monk]

I am attempting to remove 3 commas from the file below but it is not working.

  
#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my @data;
my @line;

open(FH, "error_log");
@data = <FH>;

foreach $line (@data) {
   if ($line =~ /notice/) {
      if ($line =~ /rdy/) {
        $line =~ s/ /,/g;
        my @L1 = split(/notice|[[]|mpmstats:[\t]/, $line);
        foreach $line (@L1) {
           $line =~ s/,,,/,/g;
           print @L1;
           }
        }
     }
  }

My output is as follows.

 Wed,Jun,13,10:23:35,2012,,,rdy,769,busy,31,rd,0,wr,22,ka,6

Why is the s/,,,/,/g; not substituting the single comma?

[syphilis]

Why is the s/,,,/,/g; not substituting the single comma?

I think one possibility is that the three commas are spread over two adjoining elements of @L1.
If the 3 commas don't belong to the same $line, the regex won't remove them.
Try print "@L1"; so you can see whether the 3 commas belong to the same $line.

Cheers,
Rob

[2teez]

How does your input look like? Why slurp your whole file into an array, only to iterate later, in order to inter- change or ( do substitution ) on the array indexes. Am sure there are better ways of achieving your aim using a while loop with the open function.
You can try y/,,,/,/s like so:

  my $value='Wed,Jun,13,10:23:35,2012,,,rdy,769,busy,31,rd,0,wr,22,ka,
+6 ';
     $value=~y/,,,/,/s;

  print $value;   ## Wed,Jun,13,10:23:35,2012,rdy,769,busy,31,rd,0,wr,
+22,ka,6

If I may suggest the following, use open function three argument, check if the open function fails and always close open file handler as soon as possible like so:

  open my $filehandler,'<',$file or die "can't open file: $!";
   # .... others codes
  close $filehandler or die "can't close file:$!";

[Lotus1]

Here is what the code you posted will actually output:

Global symbol "$line" requires explicit package name at 977513.pl line
+ 11.
Global symbol "$line" requires explicit package name at 977513.pl line
+ 12.
Global symbol "$line" requires explicit package name at 977513.pl line
+ 13.
Global symbol "$line" requires explicit package name at 977513.pl line
+ 14.
Global symbol "$line" requires explicit package name at 977513.pl line
+ 15.
Global symbol "$line" requires explicit package name at 977513.pl line
+ 16.
Global symbol "$line" requires explicit package name at 977513.pl line
+ 17.
Execution of 977513.pl aborted due to compilation errors.

[muba]

My guess? Because the commas are each part of another element of @L1, because they had "notice", "[", "mpmstats:", or "\t" inbetween them.

Try this fix:

# ...
if ( ($line =~ /notice/) && ($line =~ /rdy/) )

    # Spaces to commas
    $line =~ s/ /,/g;
    
    # Get rid of "notice", "[", "mpmstats:", and tabs inside the line.
    $line =~ s/notice|\[|mpmstats:|\t//g;

    # Change the dreaded Triple Comma into the nice and smooth Single 
+Comma.
    $line =~ s/,,,/,/g;
      # Or even the following if you want to replace all multiple subs
+equent commas by
      # just one:
      # $line =~ s/,,+/,/g;

    # Show me what I've got
    print $line;
}

See how I wrote your [[] as \[? I think it's more readable that way. Also, regular expression understand \t just fine. There's no need to put it into a character class. And if ( ($line =~ /notice/) && ($line =~ /rdy/) ) { pretty much does the same thing as your two if statements. The inner parens are optional, but I prefer to write it that way.

[frozenwithjoy]

Well, the good news is that s/,,,/,/g should definitely work. The bad news is that your script is doing something weird. :P A couple things to be aware of:
• you don't need to make @line an array. You can just write something like foreach my $line (@data).
• you are using $line for both foreach loops. You are trying to use the same namespace for two different things. Maybe change the second one to foreach my $L1_line split...
• Disregard this: The actual reason you aren't substituting properly is that you are printing @L1, but that array never gets modified by your substitution which acts on $line.

[muba]

The actual reason you aren't substituting properly is that you are printing @L1, but that array never gets modified by your substitution which acts on $line.

Not true:

my @L1 = qw(Abc aBc abC);
for my $line (@L1) {
    $line =~ s/a/_/i;
    print "\@L1: <", join(", ", @L1), ">; \$line: <$line>\n";
}

__END__
@L1: <_bc, aBc, abC>; $line: <_bc>
@L1: <_bc, _Bc, abC>; $line: <_Bc>
@L1: <_bc, _Bc, _bC>; $line: <_bC>