If you find yourself writing long strings of named variables, particularly if you have to synchronize them between different pieces of code you should use hashes and hash slices.
For instance suppose that somewhere you have:
@fields = qw(
viewpositionid institution department confirstname
conlastname conemail conphone titleposition posnumbert
typeposition programtype dvmonth dvday dvyear edmonth
edday edyear numposition numvacunit totsalary
budgetsalary statefundsources fedfundsources
statebudgetcat priclass subip thetime approved
);
Then your loop could be replaced with:
foreach my $rec (@ODB) {
chomp($rec);
my %db_rec;
@db_rec{@fields} = split /\t/, $rec;
if ($db_rec{viewpositionid} == $cur_rec{viewpositionid}) {
# Replace the existing with the updated.
%db_rec = %cur_rec;
$cur_rec{sub_ip} = $ENV{REMOTE_ADDR};
$cur_rec{approved} = "No";
}
print DATABASE join "\t", @db_rc{@fields};
print DATABASE "\n";
}
which is much clearer, and less error prone. (I would choose easier names to read and also try to lose the flatfile database, but one step at a time...)
The key points here are that people tend to mess up positional logic (computers don't) and you want to try to reduce the number of places that any given item of information (eg what fields appear in what order). Plus losing a ton of globals is generally a Good Thing...
Updated Steve_p - fixed the opening code tag on the second block of code
-
Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
-
Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:
<code> <a> <b> <big>
<blockquote> <br /> <dd>
<dl> <dt> <em> <font>
<h1> <h2> <h3> <h4>
<h5> <h6> <hr /> <i>
<li> <nbsp> <ol> <p>
<small> <strike> <strong>
<sub> <sup> <table>
<td> <th> <tr> <tt>
<u> <ul>
-
Snippets of code should be wrapped in
<code> tags not
<pre> tags. In fact, <pre>
tags should generally be avoided. If they must
be used, extreme care should be
taken to ensure that their contents do not
have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent
horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor
intervention).
-
Want more info? How to link
or How to display code and escape characters
are good places to start.