Q: Analyse data and provide a report - Arrays?

[Troll]

Hi,

I need to write a script which reads some data and reports the findings.
Just to give you an idea the structure is similar to the following.

Data input example:

HEADING 1
**********
ColumnA ColumnB ColumnC ColumnD ColumnE
Pete Male Marketing Single 40
Kate Female Marketing Married 30
John Male Sales Married 38
Pete Male Sales Single 52
John Male Sales Single 24
HEADING 2
**********
ColumnF ColumnG ColumnH ColumnI
whatever
whatever
whatever
whatever
Report Output example:
# of Pete's =
# of Males =
# of Salespeople =
# of Singles =
# of over 35s =
Since this is the first time I'm even writing such a script I would
appreciate some pointers.
1) Do I use arrays or associate arrays for this? Why or why not?
2) Is it possible for someone to give me a code example of counting how many
Singles we have?
3) What happens when I have read all the data under HEADING 1 and need to
move onto HEADING 2?
That is, how do I accomplish the jump from what I think is one loop onto the
next?

I imagine that there will be many more posts following this one so there's
no need to get into too much detail. Some guidance would be nice as I will
need to utilise Google and my references for the rest.

Thanks in advance.

[Troll]

Ga Mu,
Great stuff - thanks very much. :)

The headings differentiate blocks of data so once we count everything under
HEADING 1 we move onto HEADING 2 then HEADING 3 etc.

Does this help a bit?


"Ga Mu" <Ng******@SPcomcast.netAM> wrote in message
news:xl44b.306860$Ho3.43264@sccrnsc03...

Troll wrote:

1) Do I use arrays or associate arrays for this? Why or why not?

Use hashes (aka associative arrays) because they work so well for
counting occurences of words. A hash instance is automatically
initialized to zero the first time it is used, so, assuming you have
already declared the hash %names ('my %names;') and we are in your
parsing loop and have extracted the person's name into $name, all you
need is:

$names{$name}++; # increment the count for this name.

2) Is it possible for someone to give me a code example of counting how many Singles we have?

You could count everything with hashes.

Prior to your parsing loop:

my (%names, %sexes, %depts, %m_statuses, %ages);

Within your parsing loop:

# extract four words and a number into scalars:
my ($name, $sex, $dept, $m_status, $age) =
/^(\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\d+)$/;

# increment counts for each:
$names{$name}++;
$sexes{$sex}++;
$depts{$dept}++;
$m_statuses{$m_status}++;
$ages{$age}++;

After your parsing loop:

$names{'Pete'} gives the number of Petes.
$sexes{'Male'} gives the number of Males.
$depts{'Sales'} gives the number of sales people.
$m_statuses{'Single'} gives the number of single people.
$ages{'25'} gives the number of 25 year-olds.

To print a list of all names and the number of occurences of each:

foreach $key (keys %names) {
print "$key: $names{$key}\n";
}

This will output something like:

John: 2
Pete: 3
Kate: 1

This list could have been sorted by either name or count. Do a 'perldoc
-f' for 'keys' and 'sort'.

3) What happens when I have read all the data under HEADING 1 and need to move onto HEADING 2?
That is, how do I accomplish the jump from what I think is one loop onto the next?

Can't answer that, as you don't provide enough detail. What is the
significance of the headings? Would the results be the same if the
headings were completely ignored or do the headings signify some
distinction between blocks of data?

Greg

[Troll]

Ga Mu,

Pls disregard last post.

With regard to the jump between HEADINGS, will it be enough to do something
like:
while (<>)
....
if (/HEADING 1/ .. /HEADING 2/) {
# line falls between HEADING 1 and HEADING 2 in the text, inclusive.
# then do the string extraction
# then increment stuff
elsif (/HEADING 2/ .. /HEADING 3/) {
# line falls between HEADING 2 and HEADING 3 in the text, inclusive.
# then do the string extraction
# then increment stuff
etc?

I quite like the code example you provided - actually found a similar one in
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlw...pter/ch08.html
Up until now I was under the impression that I would have to use split - can
you elaborate why you chose a different approach?

One other task I have to do is similar to:

If a line contains Single in the column then get the single person's name. I sort of came up with:
foreach $m_statuses{'Single'}
print $names{$name}

but that's probably totally wrong. Can you advise?

Thanks again.
"Troll" <ab***@microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:e7*******************@news-server.bigpond.net.au... Ga Mu,
Great stuff - thanks very much. :)

The headings differentiate blocks of data so once we count everything under HEADING 1 we move onto HEADING 2 then HEADING 3 etc.

Does this help a bit?


"Ga Mu" <Ng******@SPcomcast.netAM> wrote in message
news:xl44b.306860$Ho3.43264@sccrnsc03...

Troll wrote:

1) Do I use arrays or associate arrays for this? Why or why not?
Use hashes (aka associative arrays) because they work so well for
counting occurences of words. A hash instance is automatically
initialized to zero the first time it is used, so, assuming you have
already declared the hash %names ('my %names;') and we are in your
parsing loop and have extracted the person's name into $name, all you
need is:

$names{$name}++; # increment the count for this name.

2) Is it possible for someone to give me a code example of counting

how many Singles we have?
You could count everything with hashes.

Prior to your parsing loop:

my (%names, %sexes, %depts, %m_statuses, %ages);

Within your parsing loop:

# extract four words and a number into scalars:
my ($name, $sex, $dept, $m_status, $age) =
/^(\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\d+)$/;

# increment counts for each:
$names{$name}++;
$sexes{$sex}++;
$depts{$dept}++;
$m_statuses{$m_status}++;
$ages{$age}++;

After your parsing loop:

$names{'Pete'} gives the number of Petes.
$sexes{'Male'} gives the number of Males.
$depts{'Sales'} gives the number of sales people.
$m_statuses{'Single'} gives the number of single people.
$ages{'25'} gives the number of 25 year-olds.

To print a list of all names and the number of occurences of each:

foreach $key (keys %names) {
print "$key: $names{$key}\n";
}

This will output something like:

John: 2
Pete: 3
Kate: 1

This list could have been sorted by either name or count. Do a 'perldoc
-f' for 'keys' and 'sort'.

3) What happens when I have read all the data under HEADING 1 and need to move onto HEADING 2?
That is, how do I accomplish the jump from what I think is one loop

onto the next?

Can't answer that, as you don't provide enough detail. What is the
significance of the headings? Would the results be the same if the
headings were completely ignored or do the headings signify some
distinction between blocks of data?

Greg

[Ga Mu]

Troll wrote:

Ga Mu,

Pls disregard last post.

With regard to the jump between HEADINGS, will it be enough to do something
like:
while (<>)
...
if (/HEADING 1/ .. /HEADING 2/) {
# line falls between HEADING 1 and HEADING 2 in the text, inclusive.
# then do the string extraction
# then increment stuff
elsif (/HEADING 2/ .. /HEADING 3/) {
# line falls between HEADING 2 and HEADING 3 in the text, inclusive.
# then do the string extraction
# then increment stuff
etc?
I am unclear as to the distinction between blocks. Are there a separate
group of totals for each heading or is everyting totalled up together?
If the latter, then simply ignore the headings. If the former, then you
could parse out the heading name and use a multidimensional hash. I.e.,
replace this:

$names{$name}++;

with this:

$names{$heading}{$name}++;

I quite like the code example you provided - actually found a similar one in
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlw...pter/ch08.html
Up until now I was under the impression that I would have to use split - can
you elaborate why you chose a different approach?
Either method produces the same results. If you plan on incorporating
error checking, m// allows to specifically define a format, e.g., four
words and a number, whereas split simply breaks a string up into a list.
Whichever method makes you happy.
One other task I have to do is similar to:

If a line contains Single in the column then get the single person's name.

I sort of came up with:
foreach $m_statuses{'Single'}
print $names{$name}

but that's probably totally wrong. Can you advise?

Yes, it is totally wrong. $m_statuses{'Single'} is a scalar. It is the
count of lines where the marital status is 'Single'. Your foreach loop
above would produce a syntax error. Although it is not what you're
after, a valid foreach loop could look like this:

foreach $m_status ( keys %m_statuses ) {
#
# $m_status will be 'female' for one iteration of the loop and 'male'
# for the other. (Unless you have more than two sexes...)
#
}

Perhaps a more meaningful foreach loop would look like this:

foreach $age ( keys %ages ) {
#
# For each iteration, $age will one the ages that was found in the data
# -->> IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER <<-- unless you sort it.
#
}

To do what you propose, i.e., print the name of all single people, you
would have to include the logic for that in the parsing loop:

# extract four words and a number into scalars:
my ($name, $sex, $dept, $m_status, $age) =
/^(\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\d+)$/;

# increment counts for each:
$names{$name}++;
$sexes{$sex}++;
$depts{$dept}++;
$m_statuses{$m_status}++;
$ages{$age}++;

# take special actions:
if ( $m_status eq 'Single' ) print "$name is single.\n";
if ( $age >= 40 ) print "$name is over the hill!\n";
Hope this helps!

Greg

[Troll]

Thanks again !

1)
Sorry for being too vague. With regard to the HEADINGS they separate blocks
of data. But because the column names will be different [data is different]
then I'm not quite sure I could use:
$names{$heading}{$name}++;

So I'm looking at creating separate my () definitions for each HEADING and
just wanted to confirm how to jump out of one HEADING loop and start with
the next.

For example, under HEADING 1 we have these columns:
Name, Sex, Dept, M_Status, Age

and under HEADING 2we have:
Address, Phone#, Mobile#, Salary

So at the beginning of the script I would have
my (%names, %sexes, %depts, %m_statuses, %ages)
my (%addresses, %phones, %mobiles, %salaries)
#then I have my while (<>) and parsing here
#I have my output at the end

Is that a little more clearer?
2)
With my last question regarding the printing of the names of single people,
if we include a print statement in the parsing loop would that give us
something like:
Pete is single.
John is single.
while the parsing is still running?

What I'm after is hopefully feeding that output into something else
[@array?] which can then print a list of the names [line by line] at the end
of the script, something like:
#this is the output structure
Number of Petes =
Number of Males =
Singles are:
Pete
John
Number of Salespeople =
Does this make sense?

Thanks Greg.
"Ga Mu" <Ng******@SPcomcast.netAM> wrote in message
news:3G*******************@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.n et...

Troll wrote:

Ga Mu,

Pls disregard last post.

With regard to the jump between HEADINGS, will it be enough to do something like:
while (<>)
...
if (/HEADING 1/ .. /HEADING 2/) {
# line falls between HEADING 1 and HEADING 2 in the text, inclusive.
# then do the string extraction
# then increment stuff
elsif (/HEADING 2/ .. /HEADING 3/) {
# line falls between HEADING 2 and HEADING 3 in the text, inclusive.
# then do the string extraction
# then increment stuff
etc?

I am unclear as to the distinction between blocks. Are there a separate
group of totals for each heading or is everyting totalled up together?
If the latter, then simply ignore the headings. If the former, then you
could parse out the heading name and use a multidimensional hash. I.e.,
replace this:

$names{$name}++;

with this:

$names{$heading}{$name}++;

I quite like the code example you provided - actually found a similar one in http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlw...pter/ch08.html
Up until now I was under the impression that I would have to use split - can you elaborate why you chose a different approach?

Either method produces the same results. If you plan on incorporating
error checking, m// allows to specifically define a format, e.g., four
words and a number, whereas split simply breaks a string up into a list.
Whichever method makes you happy.

One other task I have to do is similar to:

If a line contains Single in the column then get the single person's

name.
I sort of came up with:
foreach $m_statuses{'Single'}
print $names{$name}

but that's probably totally wrong. Can you advise?

Yes, it is totally wrong. $m_statuses{'Single'} is a scalar. It is the
count of lines where the marital status is 'Single'. Your foreach loop
above would produce a syntax error. Although it is not what you're
after, a valid foreach loop could look like this:

foreach $m_status ( keys %m_statuses ) {
#
# $m_status will be 'female' for one iteration of the loop and 'male'
# for the other. (Unless you have more than two sexes...)
#
}

Perhaps a more meaningful foreach loop would look like this:

foreach $age ( keys %ages ) {
#
# For each iteration, $age will one the ages that was found in the data
# -->> IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER <<-- unless you sort it.
#
}

To do what you propose, i.e., print the name of all single people, you
would have to include the logic for that in the parsing loop:

# extract four words and a number into scalars:
my ($name, $sex, $dept, $m_status, $age) =
/^(\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\d+)$/;

# increment counts for each:
$names{$name}++;
$sexes{$sex}++;
$depts{$dept}++;
$m_statuses{$m_status}++;
$ages{$age}++;

# take special actions:
if ( $m_status eq 'Single' ) print "$name is single.\n";
if ( $age >= 40 ) print "$name is over the hill!\n";
Hope this helps!

Greg

[Ga Mu]

Troll wrote:

Thanks again !

1)
Sorry for being too vague. With regard to the HEADINGS they separate blocks
of data. But because the column names will be different [data is different]
then I'm not quite sure I could use:
$names{$heading}{$name}++;

So I'm looking at creating separate my () definitions for each HEADING and
just wanted to confirm how to jump out of one HEADING loop and start with
the next.

For example, under HEADING 1 we have these columns:
Name, Sex, Dept, M_Status, Age

and under HEADING 2we have:
Address, Phone#, Mobile#, Salary

So at the beginning of the script I would have
my (%names, %sexes, %depts, %m_statuses, %ages)
my (%addresses, %phones, %mobiles, %salaries)
#then I have my while (<>) and parsing here
#I have my output at the end

Is that a little more clearer?
Yes. Much clearer. There are a couple of different ways you could do
this. One is to use a single loop that reads through the file and uses
a state variable (e.g., $heading) to keep track of where you are in the
parsing process. The other is to have a separate loop for each heading.
Again, six of one, half a dozen of another. It's more a matter of
preference than anything else.

An example of the first approach:

my $heading = 'initial';
my $fin_name = '/usr/local/blah/blah/blah';
open FIN,$fin_name || die "Can't open $fin_name\n";

while (<FIN>) {

# check for a new heading
# I am assuming single word heading names
if ( /HEADING (\S+)/ {

$heading = $1; # set $heading equal to word extracted above

# take appropriate action based on the heading we are under

} elsif ( $heading eq 'NAMES' ) {

( $name, $sex, $dept, $m_status, $age ) =
/(\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...

} elsif ( $heading eq 'ADDRESSES' ) {

# I am assuming the address field is limited to 30 characters
# here:
( $address,$phone, $mobile, $salary ) =
/(\.{30}) (\S+) (\S+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...

}

}
And the second approach:

my $heading = 'initial';
my $fin_name = '/usr/local/blah/blah/blah';
open FIN,$fin_name || die "Can't open $fin_name\n";

# scan for first heading
while ( <FIN> && ! /HEADING NAMES/ );

# parse the names, etc...
while ( <FIN> && ! /HEADING ADDRESSES/ ) {

( $name, $sex, $dept, $m_status, $age ) =
/(\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...
# parse the addresses, etc...
# for brevity , I am assuming only two headings
while ( <FIN> ) {

( $address,$phone, $mobile, $salary ) =
/(\.{30}) (\S+) (\S+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...

}


2)
With my last question regarding the printing of the names of single people,
if we include a print statement in the parsing loop would that give us
something like:
Pete is single.
John is single.
while the parsing is still running?
Yes.

What I'm after is hopefully feeding that output into something else
[@array?] which can then print a list of the names [line by line] at the end
of the script, something like:
#this is the output structure
Number of Petes =
Number of Males =
Singles are:
Pete
John
Number of Salespeople =
Does this make sense?

Yes. It would be easy to create a list/array of, e.g., single people.
Prior to the loop, declare the array. Within the loop, test each person
for being single. If they are, push them onto the list:

# prior to your parsing loop, declare array @singles:

my @singles;

# within your parsing loop, after parsing out name, status, etc.:

if ( $m_status eq 'Single' ) push @singles,($name);

# after loop, to print the list of singles:

print "Single persons:\n";
foreach $single_person ( @singles ) print " $single_person\n";
Greg

[Troll]

Wow. I don't know how you get the time to respond to my queries in such
detail. It is greatly appreciated.
I just came back from work and it's like 2:30 am so I'll crash out soon and
have a closer read tomorrow [especially of the HEADINGS part].

With the push @array stuff I actually got to this today in my readings. I
saw an example of appending an array onto another array with a push and I
was wondering if we could just substitute a $variable for one of the arrays.
I'm glad you confirmed this. :)

I was also wondering if doing this at the beginning of the script:

my (%names, %sexes, %depts, %m_statuses, %ages) # declaring things
locally

would be considered bad practice. I thought that one should declare things
as my ( ) if one is using things within a loop so as not to impact anything
external to the loop. But if one uses variables/arrays both within and
outside the loops, should we then still declare stuff as my ( )?
Maybe I'm just confused about my ( )...

Greg, if you could possibly keep an eye on this thread for the next few days
I would be very much in your debt. Your help has been invaluabe so far in
allowing me to visualise quite a few things.

Thanks very much.
"Ga Mu" <Ng******@SPcomcast.netAM> wrote in message
news:uR*******************@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.n et...

Troll wrote:

Thanks again !

1)
Sorry for being too vague. With regard to the HEADINGS they separate blocks of data. But because the column names will be different [data is different] then I'm not quite sure I could use:
$names{$heading}{$name}++;

So I'm looking at creating separate my () definitions for each HEADING and just wanted to confirm how to jump out of one HEADING loop and start with the next.

For example, under HEADING 1 we have these columns:
Name, Sex, Dept, M_Status, Age

and under HEADING 2we have:
Address, Phone#, Mobile#, Salary

So at the beginning of the script I would have
my (%names, %sexes, %depts, %m_statuses, %ages)
my (%addresses, %phones, %mobiles, %salaries)
#then I have my while (<>) and parsing here
#I have my output at the end

Is that a little more clearer?

Yes. Much clearer. There are a couple of different ways you could do
this. One is to use a single loop that reads through the file and uses
a state variable (e.g., $heading) to keep track of where you are in the
parsing process. The other is to have a separate loop for each heading.
Again, six of one, half a dozen of another. It's more a matter of
preference than anything else.

An example of the first approach:

my $heading = 'initial';
my $fin_name = '/usr/local/blah/blah/blah';
open FIN,$fin_name || die "Can't open $fin_name\n";

while (<FIN>) {

# check for a new heading
# I am assuming single word heading names
if ( /HEADING (\S+)/ {

$heading = $1; # set $heading equal to word extracted above

# take appropriate action based on the heading we are under

} elsif ( $heading eq 'NAMES' ) {

( $name, $sex, $dept, $m_status, $age ) =
/(\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...

} elsif ( $heading eq 'ADDRESSES' ) {

# I am assuming the address field is limited to 30 characters
# here:
( $address,$phone, $mobile, $salary ) =
/(\.{30}) (\S+) (\S+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...

}

}
And the second approach:

my $heading = 'initial';
my $fin_name = '/usr/local/blah/blah/blah';
open FIN,$fin_name || die "Can't open $fin_name\n";

# scan for first heading
while ( <FIN> && ! /HEADING NAMES/ );

# parse the names, etc...
while ( <FIN> && ! /HEADING ADDRESSES/ ) {

( $name, $sex, $dept, $m_status, $age ) =
/(\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...
# parse the addresses, etc...
# for brevity , I am assuming only two headings
while ( <FIN> ) {

( $address,$phone, $mobile, $salary ) =
/(\.{30}) (\S+) (\S+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...

}

2)
With my last question regarding the printing of the names of single people, if we include a print statement in the parsing loop would that give us
something like:
Pete is single.
John is single.
while the parsing is still running?

Yes.

What I'm after is hopefully feeding that output into something else
[@array?] which can then print a list of the names [line by line] at the end of the script, something like:
#this is the output structure
Number of Petes =
Number of Males =
Singles are:
Pete
John
Number of Salespeople =
Does this make sense?

Yes. It would be easy to create a list/array of, e.g., single people.
Prior to the loop, declare the array. Within the loop, test each person
for being single. If they are, push them onto the list:

# prior to your parsing loop, declare array @singles:

my @singles;

# within your parsing loop, after parsing out name, status, etc.:

if ( $m_status eq 'Single' ) push @singles,($name);

# after loop, to print the list of singles:

print "Single persons:\n";
foreach $single_person ( @singles ) print " $single_person\n";
Greg

[Troll]

Now time for some stupid Qs:

Let's say that the data I have is in a file called employees.
How can I call this file so that I can parse it?

1) Can I do:
@HRdata = `cat employees`;
while (<@HRdata>) {
2) With regard to the HEADING sections, the script has to be able to
recognise the different sections by the following rules:
# there's a blank line
before each heading
HEADING 1 # this is the name of the heading -
this is a string with a special character and a blank space as part of it
ColumnA ColumnB ColumnC # these are the column names - these are
strings which also can inlude a blank space if they have 2 or more words
******* # a sort of an underlining
pattern

I guess this is to make sure that one does not include any silly heading
data as part of the arrays created and the parsing only takes place on
'real' data. Can you pls advise? Or do you need more info? I'm more in
favour of creating separate 'if' loops due to my 'newbie' status. I'll get
lost otherwise...

Thanks.

"Troll" <ab***@microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:uR*******************@news-server.bigpond.net.au...

Wow. I don't know how you get the time to respond to my queries in such
detail. It is greatly appreciated.
I just came back from work and it's like 2:30 am so I'll crash out soon and have a closer read tomorrow [especially of the HEADINGS part].

With the push @array stuff I actually got to this today in my readings. I
saw an example of appending an array onto another array with a push and I
was wondering if we could just substitute a $variable for one of the arrays. I'm glad you confirmed this. :)

I was also wondering if doing this at the beginning of the script:

my (%names, %sexes, %depts, %m_statuses, %ages) # declaring things
locally

would be considered bad practice. I thought that one should declare things
as my ( ) if one is using things within a loop so as not to impact anything external to the loop. But if one uses variables/arrays both within and
outside the loops, should we then still declare stuff as my ( )?
Maybe I'm just confused about my ( )...

Greg, if you could possibly keep an eye on this thread for the next few days I would be very much in your debt. Your help has been invaluabe so far in
allowing me to visualise quite a few things.

Thanks very much.
"Ga Mu" <Ng******@SPcomcast.netAM> wrote in message
news:uR*******************@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.n et...

Troll wrote:

Thanks again !

1)
Sorry for being too vague. With regard to the HEADINGS they separate blocks of data. But because the column names will be different [data is different] then I'm not quite sure I could use:
$names{$heading}{$name}++;

So I'm looking at creating separate my () definitions for each HEADING and just wanted to confirm how to jump out of one HEADING loop and start with the next.

For example, under HEADING 1 we have these columns:
Name, Sex, Dept, M_Status, Age

and under HEADING 2we have:
Address, Phone#, Mobile#, Salary

So at the beginning of the script I would have
my (%names, %sexes, %depts, %m_statuses, %ages)
my (%addresses, %phones, %mobiles, %salaries)
#then I have my while (<>) and parsing here
#I have my output at the end

Is that a little more clearer?
Yes. Much clearer. There are a couple of different ways you could do
this. One is to use a single loop that reads through the file and uses
a state variable (e.g., $heading) to keep track of where you are in the
parsing process. The other is to have a separate loop for each heading.
Again, six of one, half a dozen of another. It's more a matter of
preference than anything else.

An example of the first approach:

my $heading = 'initial';
my $fin_name = '/usr/local/blah/blah/blah';
open FIN,$fin_name || die "Can't open $fin_name\n";

while (<FIN>) {

# check for a new heading
# I am assuming single word heading names
if ( /HEADING (\S+)/ {

$heading = $1; # set $heading equal to word extracted above

# take appropriate action based on the heading we are under

} elsif ( $heading eq 'NAMES' ) {

( $name, $sex, $dept, $m_status, $age ) =
/(\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...

} elsif ( $heading eq 'ADDRESSES' ) {

# I am assuming the address field is limited to 30 characters
# here:
( $address,$phone, $mobile, $salary ) =
/(\.{30}) (\S+) (\S+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...

}

}
And the second approach:

my $heading = 'initial';
my $fin_name = '/usr/local/blah/blah/blah';
open FIN,$fin_name || die "Can't open $fin_name\n";

# scan for first heading
while ( <FIN> && ! /HEADING NAMES/ );

# parse the names, etc...
while ( <FIN> && ! /HEADING ADDRESSES/ ) {

( $name, $sex, $dept, $m_status, $age ) =
/(\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...
# parse the addresses, etc...
# for brevity , I am assuming only two headings
while ( <FIN> ) {

( $address,$phone, $mobile, $salary ) =
/(\.{30}) (\S+) (\S+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...

}

2)
With my last question regarding the printing of the names of single people, if we include a print statement in the parsing loop would that give us
something like:
Pete is single.
John is single.
while the parsing is still running?

Yes.

What I'm after is hopefully feeding that output into something else
[@array?] which can then print a list of the names [line by line] at

the end of the script, something like:
#this is the output structure
Number of Petes =
Number of Males =
Singles are:
Pete
John
Number of Salespeople =
Does this make sense?

Yes. It would be easy to create a list/array of, e.g., single people.
Prior to the loop, declare the array. Within the loop, test each person
for being single. If they are, push them onto the list:

# prior to your parsing loop, declare array @singles:

my @singles;

# within your parsing loop, after parsing out name, status, etc.:

if ( $m_status eq 'Single' ) push @singles,($name);

# after loop, to print the list of singles:

print "Single persons:\n";
foreach $single_person ( @singles ) print " $single_person\n";
Greg

[Troll]

I'm getting heaps of the following errors when I run my script:
Use of uninitialized value in hash element at ...

The beginning of my script looks like:
my(%names, %sexes, %depts);
%names = ("name" => "0");
%sexes = ("sex" => "0");
%depts = ("dept" => "0");

$names = '0';
$sexes = '0';
$depts = '0';
$name = '0';
$sex = '0';
$dept = '0';

while (<>)
#and the parsing loop here...
The hash errors relate to only these 3 lines which are part of the parsing
loop:
$names{$name}++;
$sexes{$sex}++;
$depts{$dept}++;
Can you run over the variable declarations/initializations for me as I'm not
sure I'm doing this right?
Thanks.
"Troll" <ab***@microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:eh*******************@news-server.bigpond.net.au...

Now time for some stupid Qs:

Let's say that the data I have is in a file called employees.
How can I call this file so that I can parse it?

1) Can I do:
@HRdata = `cat employees`;
while (<@HRdata>) {
2) With regard to the HEADING sections, the script has to be able to
recognise the different sections by the following rules:
# there's a blank line before each heading
HEADING 1 # this is the name of the heading - this is a string with a special character and a blank space as part of it
ColumnA ColumnB ColumnC # these are the column names - these are
strings which also can inlude a blank space if they have 2 or more words
******* # a sort of an underlining
pattern

I guess this is to make sure that one does not include any silly heading
data as part of the arrays created and the parsing only takes place on
'real' data. Can you pls advise? Or do you need more info? I'm more in
favour of creating separate 'if' loops due to my 'newbie' status. I'll get
lost otherwise...

Thanks.

"Troll" <ab***@microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:uR*******************@news-server.bigpond.net.au...

Wow. I don't know how you get the time to respond to my queries in such
detail. It is greatly appreciated.
I just came back from work and it's like 2:30 am so I'll crash out soon

and

have a closer read tomorrow [especially of the HEADINGS part].

With the push @array stuff I actually got to this today in my readings. I saw an example of appending an array onto another array with a push and I was wondering if we could just substitute a $variable for one of the

arrays.

I'm glad you confirmed this. :)

I was also wondering if doing this at the beginning of the script:

my (%names, %sexes, %depts, %m_statuses, %ages) # declaring things locally

would be considered bad practice. I thought that one should declare things as my ( ) if one is using things within a loop so as not to impact

anything

external to the loop. But if one uses variables/arrays both within and
outside the loops, should we then still declare stuff as my ( )?
Maybe I'm just confused about my ( )...

Greg, if you could possibly keep an eye on this thread for the next few

days

I would be very much in your debt. Your help has been invaluabe so far in allowing me to visualise quite a few things.

Thanks very much.
"Ga Mu" <Ng******@SPcomcast.netAM> wrote in message
news:uR*******************@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.n et...

Troll wrote:
> Thanks again !
>
> 1)
> Sorry for being too vague. With regard to the HEADINGS they separate

blocks

> of data. But because the column names will be different [data is

different]

> then I'm not quite sure I could use:
> $names{$heading}{$name}++;
>
> So I'm looking at creating separate my () definitions for each HEADING

and

> just wanted to confirm how to jump out of one HEADING loop and start

with

> the next.
>
> For example, under HEADING 1 we have these columns:
> Name, Sex, Dept, M_Status, Age
>
> and under HEADING 2we have:
> Address, Phone#, Mobile#, Salary
>
> So at the beginning of the script I would have
> my (%names, %sexes, %depts, %m_statuses, %ages)
> my (%addresses, %phones, %mobiles, %salaries)
> #then I have my while (<>) and parsing here
> #I have my output at the end
>
> Is that a little more clearer?

Yes. Much clearer. There are a couple of different ways you could do
this. One is to use a single loop that reads through the file and

uses a state variable (e.g., $heading) to keep track of where you are in the parsing process. The other is to have a separate loop for each heading. Again, six of one, half a dozen of another. It's more a matter of
preference than anything else.

An example of the first approach:

my $heading = 'initial';
my $fin_name = '/usr/local/blah/blah/blah';
open FIN,$fin_name || die "Can't open $fin_name\n";

while (<FIN>) {

# check for a new heading
# I am assuming single word heading names
if ( /HEADING (\S+)/ {

$heading = $1; # set $heading equal to word extracted above

# take appropriate action based on the heading we are under

} elsif ( $heading eq 'NAMES' ) {

( $name, $sex, $dept, $m_status, $age ) =
/(\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...

} elsif ( $heading eq 'ADDRESSES' ) {

# I am assuming the address field is limited to 30 characters
# here:
( $address,$phone, $mobile, $salary ) =
/(\.{30}) (\S+) (\S+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...

}

}
And the second approach:

my $heading = 'initial';
my $fin_name = '/usr/local/blah/blah/blah';
open FIN,$fin_name || die "Can't open $fin_name\n";

# scan for first heading
while ( <FIN> && ! /HEADING NAMES/ );

# parse the names, etc...
while ( <FIN> && ! /HEADING ADDRESSES/ ) {

( $name, $sex, $dept, $m_status, $age ) =
/(\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...
# parse the addresses, etc...
# for brevity , I am assuming only two headings
while ( <FIN> ) {

( $address,$phone, $mobile, $salary ) =
/(\.{30}) (\S+) (\S+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...

}

>
>
> 2)
> With my last question regarding the printing of the names of single

people,

> if we include a print statement in the parsing loop would that give us > something like:
> Pete is single.
> John is single.
> while the parsing is still running?

Yes.

>
> What I'm after is hopefully feeding that output into something else
> [@array?] which can then print a list of the names [line by line] at

the

end

> of the script, something like:
> #this is the output structure
> Number of Petes =
> Number of Males =
> Singles are:
> Pete
> John
> Number of Salespeople =
>
>
> Does this make sense?
>

Yes. It would be easy to create a list/array of, e.g., single people.
Prior to the loop, declare the array. Within the loop, test each person for being single. If they are, push them onto the list:

# prior to your parsing loop, declare array @singles:

my @singles;

# within your parsing loop, after parsing out name, status, etc.:

if ( $m_status eq 'Single' ) push @singles,($name);

# after loop, to print the list of singles:

print "Single persons:\n";
foreach $single_person ( @singles ) print " $single_person\n";
Greg

[Ga Mu]

Troll wrote:

Greg,
I decided to give you a glimpse at the code itself so as to make it clearer.
Just be aware that the variable/array names have changed but the general
idea is the same.
The hash errors refer to the variables in the increment section.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

open(NET, "netstat|") || die ("Cannot run netstat: $!");

my(%UDP4localaddresses, %UDP4remoteaddresses, %UDP4states);

$UDP4localaddress = '0';
$UDP4remoteaddress = '0';
$UDP4state = '0';

Why are you doing this (above)? This is initializing three variables to
zero. These three variables have nothing to do with the three variables
of the same name in the while loop.
$UDP4localaddresses = '0';
$UDP4remoteaddresses = '0';
$UDP4states = '0';

Why are you doing this (above)? This is initializing three scalars to
zero. These three scalars have the same name, but have nothing else to
do with the hashes of the same name.
$UDP4localaddresses{$UDP4localaddress} = '0';
$UDP4remoteaddresses{$UDP4remoteaddress} = '0';
$UDP4states = ($UDP4state} = '0';

Instances of hash keys are automatically initialized to zero. That is
what makes them perfect for counting occurences of unknown words,
numbers, etc. And even if you had to initialize them, you are
initilizing $UDP4localaddresses{0} to zero.
while (<NET>) {
my($UDP4localaddress, $UDP4remoteaddress, $UDP4state)=
/(\s+) (\s+) (\s+)$/;

#increments start here
$UDP4localaddresses{$UDP4localaddress}++;
$UDP4remoteaddresses{$UDP4remoteaddress}++;
$UDP4states = ($UDP4state}++;
If the increments above are failing, it is probably because your m// is
failing and one or more of the keys (variable inside the {}) are
undefined. Try putting a print statement before the increments and
print each of the variables you are extracting, then play with the
regular expression until you get values for ALL of them.
}

#here comes the output
Can you pls criticise my futile attempt to get this going? As one can see,
I'm not that clear on initializations...

[Ga Mu]

Troll wrote:

Now time for some stupid Qs:

Let's say that the data I have is in a file called employees.
How can I call this file so that I can parse it?

1) Can I do:
@HRdata = `cat employees`;
while (<@HRdata>) {
The above is considered bad practice, especially if the file is large.
Why read the entire file into memory when you can read, process, and
discard a line at a time..? To open and read a file:

open (FIN, '<employess') || die "blah blah blah...";

while (<FIN>) {
}


2) With regard to the HEADING sections, the script has to be able to
recognise the different sections by the following rules:
# there's a blank line
before each heading
HEADING 1 # this is the name of the heading -
this is a string with a special character and a blank space as part of it
ColumnA ColumnB ColumnC # these are the column names - these are
strings which also can inlude a blank space if they have 2 or more words
******* # a sort of an underlining
pattern

while (<FIN>) {

if ( /^$/ ) {

# this is a blank line, don't do anything

} elsif ( /HEADING (\.+)/ ) {

# this is a heading, with the heading name in $1

} elsif ( (($name, $sex, $status, $age) = /(\s+) (\s+) (\s+) (\d+)/) ==
4 ) {

# this line contains three words and a number, do whatever
# (I'm not really sure if this will work. My Linux box is
# down and I have no way of testing.)

}

} # end of while(<FIN>)
I guess this is to make sure that one does not include any silly heading
data as part of the arrays created and the parsing only takes place on
'real' data. Can you pls advise? Or do you need more info? I'm more in
favour of creating separate 'if' loops due to my 'newbie' status. I'll get
lost otherwise...

"if loops"...? How does one make an if loop?
Thanks.

"Troll" <ab***@microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:uR*******************@news-server.bigpond.net.au...

Wow. I don't know how you get the time to respond to my queries in such
detail. It is greatly appreciated.
I just came back from work and it's like 2:30 am so I'll crash out soon

and

have a closer read tomorrow [especially of the HEADINGS part].

With the push @array stuff I actually got to this today in my readings. I
saw an example of appending an array onto another array with a push and I
was wondering if we could just substitute a $variable for one of the

arrays.

I'm glad you confirmed this. :)

I was also wondering if doing this at the beginning of the script:

my (%names, %sexes, %depts, %m_statuses, %ages) # declaring things
locally

would be considered bad practice. I thought that one should declare things
as my ( ) if one is using things within a loop so as not to impact

anything

external to the loop. But if one uses variables/arrays both within and
outside the loops, should we then still declare stuff as my ( )?
Maybe I'm just confused about my ( )...

Greg, if you could possibly keep an eye on this thread for the next few

days

I would be very much in your debt. Your help has been invaluabe so far in
allowing me to visualise quite a few things.

Thanks very much.
"Ga Mu" <Ng******@SPcomcast.netAM> wrote in message
news:uR*******************@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att .net...

Troll wrote:

Thanks again !

1)
Sorry for being too vague. With regard to the HEADINGS they separate

blocks

of data. But because the column names will be different [data is

different]

then I'm not quite sure I could use:
$names{$heading}{$name}++;

So I'm looking at creating separate my () definitions for each HEADING

and

just wanted to confirm how to jump out of one HEADING loop and start

with

the next.

For example, under HEADING 1 we have these columns:
Name, Sex, Dept, M_Status, Age

and under HEADING 2we have:
Address, Phone#, Mobile#, Salary

So at the beginning of the script I would have
my (%names, %sexes, %depts, %m_statuses, %ages)
my (%addresses, %phones, %mobiles, %salaries)
#then I have my while (<>) and parsing here
#I have my output at the end

Is that a little more clearer?

Yes. Much clearer. There are a couple of different ways you could do
this. One is to use a single loop that reads through the file and uses
a state variable (e.g., $heading) to keep track of where you are in the
parsing process. The other is to have a separate loop for each heading.
Again, six of one, half a dozen of another. It's more a matter of
preference than anything else.

An example of the first approach:

my $heading = 'initial';
my $fin_name = '/usr/local/blah/blah/blah';
open FIN,$fin_name || die "Can't open $fin_name\n";

while (<FIN>) {

# check for a new heading
# I am assuming single word heading names
if ( /HEADING (\S+)/ {

$heading = $1; # set $heading equal to word extracted above

# take appropriate action based on the heading we are under

} elsif ( $heading eq 'NAMES' ) {

( $name, $sex, $dept, $m_status, $age ) =
/(\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...

} elsif ( $heading eq 'ADDRESSES' ) {

# I am assuming the address field is limited to 30 characters
# here:
( $address,$phone, $mobile, $salary ) =
/(\.{30}) (\S+) (\S+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...

}

}
And the second approach:

my $heading = 'initial';
my $fin_name = '/usr/local/blah/blah/blah';
open FIN,$fin_name || die "Can't open $fin_name\n";

# scan for first heading
while ( <FIN> && ! /HEADING NAMES/ );

# parse the names, etc...
while ( <FIN> && ! /HEADING ADDRESSES/ ) {

( $name, $sex, $dept, $m_status, $age ) =
/(\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\w+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...
# parse the addresses, etc...
# for brevity , I am assuming only two headings
while ( <FIN> ) {

( $address,$phone, $mobile, $salary ) =
/(\.{30}) (\S+) (\S+) (\d+)/;

# update counts, append to lists, etc...

}

2)
With my last question regarding the printing of the names of single

people,

if we include a print statement in the parsing loop would that give us
something like:
Pete is single.
John is single.
while the parsing is still running?

Yes.
What I'm after is hopefully feeding that output into something else
[@array?] which can then print a list of the names [line by line] at

the

end

of the script, something like:
#this is the output structure
Number of Petes =
Number of Males =
Singles are:
Pete
John
Number of Salespeople =
Does this make sense?
Yes. It would be easy to create a list/array of, e.g., single people.
Prior to the loop, declare the array. Within the loop, test each person
for being single. If they are, push them onto the list:

# prior to your parsing loop, declare array @singles:

my @singles;

# within your parsing loop, after parsing out name, status, etc.:

if ( $m_status eq 'Single' ) push @singles,($name);

# after loop, to print the list of singles:

print "Single persons:\n";
foreach $single_person ( @singles ) print " $single_person\n";
Greg

[Troll]

Thanks again :)

Will I get these errors:
Use of uninitialized value in print at ./netstat.pl line 16, <NET> line 1.
Use of uninitialized value in print at ./netstat.pl line 17, <NET> line 1.
Use of uninitialized value in print at ./netstat.pl line 18, <NET> line 1.
....etc

if an undefined value is passed, for example, to $UDP4localaddress?
Because if that's the case then all I need to do is to make sure that
whatever I'm passing as part of the m()// is correctly split and defined as
a string, digit, word etc, yes?
"Ga Mu" <Ng******@SPcomcast.netAM> wrote in message
news:SM25b.251663$cF.79266@rwcrnsc53...

Troll wrote:

Greg,
I decided to give you a glimpse at the code itself so as to make it clearer. Just be aware that the variable/array names have changed but the general
idea is the same.
The hash errors refer to the variables in the increment section.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

open(NET, "netstat|") || die ("Cannot run netstat: $!");

my(%UDP4localaddresses, %UDP4remoteaddresses, %UDP4states);

$UDP4localaddress = '0';
$UDP4remoteaddress = '0';
$UDP4state = '0';

Why are you doing this (above)? This is initializing three variables to
zero. These three variables have nothing to do with the three variables
of the same name in the while loop.

$UDP4localaddresses = '0';
$UDP4remoteaddresses = '0';
$UDP4states = '0';

Why are you doing this (above)? This is initializing three scalars to
zero. These three scalars have the same name, but have nothing else to
do with the hashes of the same name.

$UDP4localaddresses{$UDP4localaddress} = '0';
$UDP4remoteaddresses{$UDP4remoteaddress} = '0';
$UDP4states = ($UDP4state} = '0';

Instances of hash keys are automatically initialized to zero. That is
what makes them perfect for counting occurences of unknown words,
numbers, etc. And even if you had to initialize them, you are
initilizing $UDP4localaddresses{0} to zero.

while (<NET>) {
my($UDP4localaddress, $UDP4remoteaddress, $UDP4state)=
/(\s+) (\s+) (\s+)$/;

#increments start here
$UDP4localaddresses{$UDP4localaddress}++;
$UDP4remoteaddresses{$UDP4remoteaddress}++;
$UDP4states = ($UDP4state}++;

If the increments above are failing, it is probably because your m// is
failing and one or more of the keys (variable inside the {}) are
undefined. Try putting a print statement before the increments and
print each of the variables you are extracting, then play with the
regular expression until you get values for ALL of them.

}

#here comes the output
Can you pls criticise my futile attempt to get this going? As one can see, I'm not that clear on initializations...

[John Bokma]

Ga Mu wrote:

while (<FIN>) {

if ( /^$/ ) {

# this is a blank line, don't do anything

next if /^\s*$/; # skip blank lines (or consisting of white space
# only)
} elsif ( /HEADING (\.+)/ ) {

# this is a heading, with the heading name in $1

if (/ .....) {

# this is a heading
next;
}
} elsif ( (($name, $sex, $status, $age) = /(\s+) (\s+) (\s+) (\d+)/) ==

if (......) {

# bla bla
next;
}

next moves on to the next "while step".

--
Kind regards, feel free to mail: mail(at)johnbokma.com (or reply)
virtual home: http://johnbokma.com/ ICQ: 218175426
John web site hints: http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/

[Ga Mu]

Troll wrote:

Thanks again :)

Will I get these errors:
Use of uninitialized value in print at ./netstat.pl line 16, <NET> line 1.
Use of uninitialized value in print at ./netstat.pl line 17, <NET> line 1.
Use of uninitialized value in print at ./netstat.pl line 18, <NET> line 1.
...etc

if an undefined value is passed, for example, to $UDP4localaddress?
Because if that's the case then all I need to do is to make sure that
whatever I'm passing as part of the m()// is correctly split and defined as
a string, digit, word etc, yes?

Exactly. Experiment with your re in the m// until you get values.

[Ga Mu]

Troll wrote:

Thanks again. No reading files into memory from now on [unless necessary] :)

The data will actually be read from stdin in the form of
$ netstat | netstat.pl
or
$ netstat.pl < netstat

Will something like this suffice?
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
while (<STDIN>) {

STDIN is the default file handle, so all you need is:

while (<>) {

}

"if loops"...? How does one make an if loop?

What I meant here is that I'll create 4 separate 'if' sections [with their
own elsif branches], one for each HEADING section [there are 4 of them].
So I think I meant 'if' statements...is that better or I am still confusing
my terminology?

Makes more sense...

[Troll]

Thanks very much.

I'm having a bit of drama within my parsing loop.

If I'm trying to look for a specific pattern [ie. tcp] then I am able to
find it [by printing a 'found' message]. This message is then printed each
and every time 'tcp' is found [for a total of 6 times on 6 separate lines].
The script then finishes.

But if I'm trying to increment the number of times this pattern was found I
get the dreaded error:
Use of uninitialized value in hash element at ...

Here's the code extract:
while (<>) {
my($Proto)=
/(\s+)*$/;

if (/tcp/) {
print 'found';
$Protos{$Proto}++;
where am I failing ?

[Troll]

OK, I had some luck getting the first value incremented but no more.

Version which works:
*****************
if (/tcp/) {
my($Proto)=
/^(\w+)/;
$Protos{$Proto}++;
}
print "TCP = $Protos{'tcp'}\n";

#output section
TCP = 6 # all is correct here
Version which does not work:
**********************
if (/tcp/) {
my($Proto, $RecvQ)=
/^(\w+) (\s+)/;
$Protos{$Proto}++;
$RecvQs{$RecvQ)++;
}
print "TCP = $Protos{'tcp'}\n";
print "RecvQ = $RecvQs{'0'}\n";

#output section
TCP = 6 # all is correct here
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at... # error
time - this refers to the 2nd print statement
RecvQ = # this is blank

I have tried reading the second parameter as a (\s+) and as a (\d+) with no
luck. If you run netstat you will probably see that all items in the RecvQ
column are 0.
What have I done wrong now?

Can a number of whitespaces be represented by:
/^(\w+) (\s+)/; # this is a word followed by some spaces followed by a
string
or is the above only ONE whitespace?

[John Bokma]

Troll wrote:

OK, I had some luck getting the first value incremented but no more.

Version which works:
*****************
if (/tcp/) {
my($Proto)=
/^(\w+)/;
$Protos{$Proto}++;
}
print "TCP = $Protos{'tcp'}\n";

#output section
TCP = 6 # all is correct here
Version which does not work:
**********************
if (/tcp/) {
my($Proto, $RecvQ)=
/^(\w+) (\s+)/;
$Protos{$Proto}++;
$RecvQs{$RecvQ)++;
}
print "TCP = $Protos{'tcp'}\n";
print "RecvQ = $RecvQs{'0'}\n";

#output section
TCP = 6 # all is correct here
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at... # error
time - this refers to the 2nd print statement
RecvQ = # this is blank

I have tried reading the second parameter as a (\s+) and as a (\d+) with no
luck. If you run netstat you will probably see that all items in the RecvQ
column are 0.
What have I done wrong now?
I guess you want (\S+) ie, non-whitespace. If it are always digits you
should use (\d+). If the number of spaces between proto and recvq can be
more than one you should use something like:

(\w+)\s+(\d+)

print the values of $proto and $recvq

Also, you can't be sure there are any recvqs{'0'} so check this
same for protos.

print "TCP = ...." if defined $Protos{'tcp'};
print "RecvQ = ..." if defined $RecvQs{'0'};
Can a number of whitespaces be represented by:
/^(\w+) (\s+)/; # this is a word followed by some spaces followed by a
string

nope. \s+ means one or more whitespaces. Not *string*
and it is a word followed by exactly one space (white space?).
See above.

HTH

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[Ga Mu]

Troll wrote:

Here's the code extract:
while (<>) {
my($Proto)=
/(\s+)*$/;

Your m// above is saying find an occurence of one or more spaces, zero
or more times, terminated by an end-of-line.
if (/tcp/) {
print 'found';
$Protos{$Proto}++;

This m// has nothing to do with the value, if any, that was extracted
into $proto. It is looking at the last line read for "tcp".

I'll continue in you next post...

[Troll]

Looks like I had some typos there but after correcting them it's still a no
go :(
/^(\w+) (\s+)/;
was changed to
/^(\w+)(\s+)(\S+)(\s+)(\S+)/;
# looking for word(s), 1 or more spaces, non-space(s), space(s),
non-space(s)
Still get the same output tho:
#output section
TCP = 6 # all is correct here
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at... # error
time - this refers to the 2nd print statement
RecvQ = # this is blank

What am I missing?
"Troll" <ab***@microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:%E******************@news-server.bigpond.net.au...

OK, I had some luck getting the first value incremented but no more.

Version which works:
*****************
if (/tcp/) {
my($Proto)=
/^(\w+)/;
$Protos{$Proto}++;
}
print "TCP = $Protos{'tcp'}\n";

#output section
TCP = 6 # all is correct here
Version which does not work:
**********************
if (/tcp/) {
my($Proto, $RecvQ)=
/^(\w+) (\s+)/;
$Protos{$Proto}++;
$RecvQs{$RecvQ)++;
}
print "TCP = $Protos{'tcp'}\n";
print "RecvQ = $RecvQs{'0'}\n";

#output section
TCP = 6 # all is correct here
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at... # error time - this refers to the 2nd print statement
RecvQ = # this is blank

I have tried reading the second parameter as a (\s+) and as a (\d+) with no luck. If you run netstat you will probably see that all items in the RecvQ
column are 0.
What have I done wrong now?

Can a number of whitespaces be represented by:
/^(\w+) (\s+)/; # this is a word followed by some spaces followed by a
string
or is the above only ONE whitespace?

[Troll]

You just saved me some more stress John. Thanks !
This (\w+)\s+(\d+) did the trick.

Can you pls elaborate on the difference between including stuff in brackets
or not?
Is it always in brackets except for SPACE searches?

"John Bokma" <po********@castleamber.com> wrote in message
news:3f*********************@news.kabelfoon.nl...

Troll wrote:

OK, I had some luck getting the first value incremented but no more.

Version which works:
*****************
if (/tcp/) {
my($Proto)=
/^(\w+)/;
$Protos{$Proto}++;
}
print "TCP = $Protos{'tcp'}\n";

#output section
TCP = 6 # all is correct here
Version which does not work:
**********************
if (/tcp/) {
my($Proto, $RecvQ)=
/^(\w+) (\s+)/;
$Protos{$Proto}++;
$RecvQs{$RecvQ)++;
}
print "TCP = $Protos{'tcp'}\n";
print "RecvQ = $RecvQs{'0'}\n";

#output section
TCP = 6 # all is correct here
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at... # error time - this refers to the 2nd print statement
RecvQ = # this is blank

I have tried reading the second parameter as a (\s+) and as a (\d+) with no luck. If you run netstat you will probably see that all items in the RecvQ column are 0.
What have I done wrong now?

I guess you want (\S+) ie, non-whitespace. If it are always digits you
should use (\d+). If the number of spaces between proto and recvq can be
more than one you should use something like:

(\w+)\s+(\d+)

print the values of $proto and $recvq

Also, you can't be sure there are any recvqs{'0'} so check this
same for protos.

print "TCP = ...." if defined $Protos{'tcp'};
print "RecvQ = ..." if defined $RecvQs{'0'};

Can a number of whitespaces be represented by:
/^(\w+) (\s+)/; # this is a word followed by some spaces followed by a
string

nope. \s+ means one or more whitespaces. Not *string*
and it is a word followed by exactly one space (white space?).
See above.

HTH

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[John Bokma]

Troll wrote:

Looks like I had some typos there but after correcting them it's still a no
go :(
/^(\w+) (\s+)/;
was changed to
/^(\w+)(\s+)(\S+)(\s+)(\S+)/;
# looking for word(s), 1 or more spaces, non-space(s), space(s),
non-space(s)
Still get the same output tho:
#output section
TCP = 6 # all is correct here
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at... # error
time - this refers to the 2nd print statement
RecvQ = # this is blank

What am I missing?

post a valid line.
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[Ga Mu]

Troll wrote:

OK, I had some luck getting the first value incremented but no more.

Version which works:
*****************
if (/tcp/) {
my($Proto)=
/^(\w+)/;
$Protos{$Proto}++;
}
print "TCP = $Protos{'tcp'}\n";

#output section
TCP = 6 # all is correct here
Version which does not work:
**********************
if (/tcp/) {
my($Proto, $RecvQ)=
/^(\w+) (\s+)/;
The above re says find and extract a word into $Proto, find some
whitepsace and ignore it, then find more whitepsace and extract it into
$RecvQ. Do you mean to use an uypper-case S, meaning find non-whitepsace..?
$Protos{$Proto}++;
$RecvQs{$RecvQ)++;
}
print "TCP = $Protos{'tcp'}\n";
print "RecvQ = $RecvQs{'0'}\n";

#output section
TCP = 6 # all is correct here
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at... # error
time - this refers to the 2nd print statement
RecvQ = # this is blank

I have tried reading the second parameter as a (\s+) and as a (\d+) with no
luck. If you run netstat you will probably see that all items in the RecvQ
column are 0.
What have I done wrong now?

If you are trying to parse this:

Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State
tcp 0 0 redhat:ssh winxp:1099 ESTABLISHED

how about this:

my ($proto,$rxQ,$txQ,$l_addr,$r_addr,$state) =
/^(\w+) (\d+) (\d+) (\S+) (\S+) (\w+)/;

which says (with whitespace in between each):

find a word and extract into $proto,
find a number and extract into $rxQ,
ditto for $txQ,
find NON-whitespace and extract into $l_addr,
ditto for $r_addr,
find a word and extract into $state.

Use \S+ for the addresses because they contain numbers, letters, and a
colon. Neither \w nor \d would match these.
Can a number of whitespaces be represented by:
/^(\w+) (\s+)/; # this is a word followed by some spaces followed by a
string
or is the above only ONE whitespace?

\s (lower-case) DOES NOT mean a string, it means whitespace.
\S (upper-case) means non-whitespace.

If you have access to "The Camel Book" by ORA, try reading the section
on pattern matching. It's clear you're not getting how to construct a
meaningful regular expression.

[Ga Mu]

Ga Mu wrote:

If you are trying to parse this:

Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State
tcp 0 0 redhat:ssh winxp:1099 ESTABLISHED

how about this:

my ($proto,$rxQ,$txQ,$l_addr,$r_addr,$state) =
/^(\w+) (\d+) (\d+) (\S+) (\S+) (\w+)/;

WHOOPS!

That re should have been:

/^(\w+) +(\d+) +(\d+) +(\S+) +(\S+) +(\w+)/

I just tested it and it works (my Linux box is back up).

Alternatively, you could use "\s+" instead of " +". The former means
one or more whitespace characters (space, tab, newline) , the latter (I
think) means find one or more space characters only (no tab or newline).
which says (with whitespace in between each):

find a word and extract into $proto,
find a number and extract into $rxQ,
ditto for $txQ,
find NON-whitespace and extract into $l_addr,
ditto for $r_addr,
find a word and extract into $state.

[Troll]

Greg,
Your last bit made me laugh cause it is exactly how I feel. Still need a lot
of work to understand regexes.
But thanks to the last posts from yourself and John and 2 links I found,
this is much clearer now.

My apologies to both of you for being such a pain :(
"Ga Mu" <Ng******@SPcomcast.netAM> wrote in message
news:%ao5b.342052$YN5.233647@sccrnsc01...

Troll wrote:

OK, I had some luck getting the first value incremented but no more.

Version which works:
*****************
if (/tcp/) {
my($Proto)=
/^(\w+)/;
$Protos{$Proto}++;
}
print "TCP = $Protos{'tcp'}\n";

#output section
TCP = 6 # all is correct here
Version which does not work:
**********************
if (/tcp/) {
my($Proto, $RecvQ)=
/^(\w+) (\s+)/;
The above re says find and extract a word into $Proto, find some
whitepsace and ignore it, then find more whitepsace and extract it into
$RecvQ. Do you mean to use an uypper-case S, meaning find

non-whitepsace..?

$Protos{$Proto}++;
$RecvQs{$RecvQ)++;
}
print "TCP = $Protos{'tcp'}\n";
print "RecvQ = $RecvQs{'0'}\n";

#output section
TCP = 6 # all is correct here
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at... # error time - this refers to the 2nd print statement
RecvQ = # this is blank

I have tried reading the second parameter as a (\s+) and as a (\d+) with no luck. If you run netstat you will probably see that all items in the RecvQ column are 0.
What have I done wrong now?

If you are trying to parse this:

Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State
tcp 0 0 redhat:ssh winxp:1099 ESTABLISHED

how about this:

my ($proto,$rxQ,$txQ,$l_addr,$r_addr,$state) =
/^(\w+) (\d+) (\d+) (\S+) (\S+) (\w+)/;

which says (with whitespace in between each):

find a word and extract into $proto,
find a number and extract into $rxQ,
ditto for $txQ,
find NON-whitespace and extract into $l_addr,
ditto for $r_addr,
find a word and extract into $state.

Use \S+ for the addresses because they contain numbers, letters, and a
colon. Neither \w nor \d would match these.

Can a number of whitespaces be represented by:
/^(\w+) (\s+)/; # this is a word followed by some spaces followed by a
string
or is the above only ONE whitespace?

\s (lower-case) DOES NOT mean a string, it means whitespace.
\S (upper-case) means non-whitespace.

If you have access to "The Camel Book" by ORA, try reading the section
on pattern matching. It's clear you're not getting how to construct a
meaningful regular expression.

[Troll]

:)

Mine was failing somewhere on the 4th parameter search ie. the first (\S+)
but that's because I was trying to do:
print "Dells = $LocalAddresses{'Dell'}\n;
whereas there was no value of Dell being passed anywhere - there was only
Dell:smtp and Dell:32769...DOH...
Also, what's the purpose of having something like this at the beginning of
the script:
my (%protos,%rxQs,%txQs,%l_addrs,%r_addrs,%states)
cause when I remarked it with # there was no diff to the way the script
runs.

[John Bokma]

Troll wrote:

Will do - thanks.
I came across the
use strict
before [looking at other ppls script examples] but never got the chance to
read up on it yet.

On a TO DO list now...

put it on *top* of the list. Speaking of top: don't top post and snip
things no longer relevant.

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[Troll]

Sorry. I tried to improve the visibility a bit as the thread was scrolling
but I see you point.
A NG etiquette refresher needed...
Will keep things in order now and *snip* [what does that stand for?] them
when necessary
"John Bokma" <po********@castleamber.com> wrote in message
news:3f*********************@news.kabelfoon.nl...

Troll wrote:

Will do - thanks.
I came across the
use strict
before [looking at other ppls script examples] but never got the chance to read up on it yet.

On a TO DO list now...

put it on *top* of the list. Speaking of top: don't top post and snip
things no longer relevant.

--
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[John Bokma]

Troll wrote:

Sorry. I tried to improve the visibility a bit as the thread was scrolling
but I see you point.
A NG etiquette refresher needed...
Will keep things in order now and *snip* [what does that stand for?] them
when necessary

cut. It is quite common when a large part is removed to state what was
removed, e.g.:

[cut perl example]

or

[snip perl example]

Sometimes <> is used instead of []. Or even ...

Most newsreaders provide scrolling by pressing the space bar. Reading a
top post and scrolling down to understand to what it is referring (and
back up and down etc) is always harder than reading bottom down. Most
postings fit on a screen after careful cutting.

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[Troll]

John and Greg,
Thanks for the help today [again].

I'm sure to have some more Qs tomorrow but right now I need to rewrite the
code from my laptop to an external Solaris box. This will also mean my
variable definions will change. This little task will take me some time
especially that the vi editor I have to use is a less friendly version than
the one which comes with my RH9. I then need to test the code on the
external system so I don't see myself posting anymore today until same time
tomorrow.

Cheers,
T

"John Bokma" <po********@castleamber.com> wrote in message
news:3f*********************@news.kabelfoon.nl...

Troll wrote:

Sorry. I tried to improve the visibility a bit as the thread was scrolling but I see you point.
A NG etiquette refresher needed...
Will keep things in order now and *snip* [what does that stand for?] them when necessary

cut. It is quite common when a large part is removed to state what was
removed, e.g.:

[cut perl example]

or

[snip perl example]

Sometimes <> is used instead of []. Or even ...

Most newsreaders provide scrolling by pressing the space bar. Reading a
top post and scrolling down to understand to what it is referring (and
back up and down etc) is always harder than reading bottom down. Most
postings fit on a screen after careful cutting.

--
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virtual home: http://johnbokma.com/ ICQ: 218175426
John web site hints: http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/

[Troll]

Back again...
I have to say that I'm now in possession of a mostly working script - thanks
to the both of you and some Google links.

How can I get the total number of items that has been passed here?
$UDP6LocalAddresses{$UDP6LocalAddress}++;


"Troll" <ab***@microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:oC*******************@news-server.bigpond.net.au...

John and Greg,
Thanks for the help today [again].

I'm sure to have some more Qs tomorrow but right now I need to rewrite the
code from my laptop to an external Solaris box. This will also mean my
variable definions will change. This little task will take me some time
especially that the vi editor I have to use is a less friendly version than the one which comes with my RH9. I then need to test the code on the
external system so I don't see myself posting anymore today until same time tomorrow.

Cheers,
T

"John Bokma" <po********@castleamber.com> wrote in message
news:3f*********************@news.kabelfoon.nl...

Troll wrote:

Sorry. I tried to improve the visibility a bit as the thread was scrolling but I see you point.
A NG etiquette refresher needed...
Will keep things in order now and *snip* [what does that stand for?] them when necessary

cut. It is quite common when a large part is removed to state what was
removed, e.g.:

[cut perl example]

or

[snip perl example]

Sometimes <> is used instead of []. Or even ...

Most newsreaders provide scrolling by pressing the space bar. Reading a
top post and scrolling down to understand to what it is referring (and
back up and down etc) is always harder than reading bottom down. Most
postings fit on a screen after careful cutting.

--
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virtual home: http://johnbokma.com/ ICQ: 218175426
John web site hints: http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/

[John Bokma]

Troll wrote:

Back again...
I have to say that I'm now in possession of a mostly working script - thanks
to the both of you and some Google links.

How can I get the total number of items that has been passed here?
$UDP6LocalAddresses{$UDP6LocalAddress}++;

print "$UDP6LocalAddresses{$UDP6LocalAddress}\n";

or do you mean all?

There are two ways: summing all hash values or keeping an additional
counter. The latter means: before your loop:

my $total_count = 0;

and after each $UDP6LocalAddresses{$UDP6LocalAddress}++; do

$total_count++;
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[Troll]

Yeah, I was trying this but kept on getting a Global parameter error of some sort:
Global symbol "" requires explicit package name

If I use the total_count method it unfortunately counts my section headings as well
[I ended up simplifying the section searches a bit]
"John Bokma" <po********@castleamber.com> wrote in message news:3f*********************@news.kabelfoon.nl...

Troll wrote:

Back again...
I have to say that I'm now in possession of a mostly working script - thanks
to the both of you and some Google links.

How can I get the total number of items that has been passed here?
$UDP6LocalAddresses{$UDP6LocalAddress}++;

print "$UDP6LocalAddresses{$UDP6LocalAddress}\n";

or do you mean all?

There are two ways: summing all hash values or keeping an additional
counter. The latter means: before your loop:

my $total_count = 0;

and after each $UDP6LocalAddresses{$UDP6LocalAddress}++; do

$total_count++;


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[John Bokma]

Troll wrote:

Yeah, I was trying this but kept on getting a Global parameter error of some sort:

Global symbol "" requires explicit package name

If I use the total_count method it unfortunately counts my section headings as well
[I ended up simplifying the section searches a bit]

my $sum = 0;
foreach my $value (values %UDP6LocalAddresses) {

$sum += $value;
}

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[Troll]

"Troll" <ab***@microsoft.com> wrote in message news:%i*******************@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
Yeah, I was trying this but kept on getting a Global parameter error of some sort:
Global symbol "" requires explicit package name

If I use the total_count method it unfortunately counts my section headings as well
[I ended up simplifying the section searches a bit]
"John Bokma" <po********@castleamber.com> wrote in message news:3f*********************@news.kabelfoon.nl...

Troll wrote:

Back again...
I have to say that I'm now in possession of a mostly working script - thanks
to the both of you and some Google links.

How can I get the total number of items that has been passed here?
$UDP6LocalAddresses{$UDP6LocalAddress}++;

print "$UDP6LocalAddresses{$UDP6LocalAddress}\n";

or do you mean all?

There are two ways: summing all hash values or keeping an additional
counter. The latter means: before your loop:

my $total_count = 0;

and after each $UDP6LocalAddresses{$UDP6LocalAddress}++; do

$total_count++;


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OK, I fixed it.
It ain't the most pretty of solutions but it works.

if (/UDP: IPv6/../^$/) {
my($UDP6LocalAddress)=
/^\s+(\S+)/;
$UDP6LocalAddresses{$UDP6LocalAddress}++;
if (/^$/ || /UDP: IPv6/ || /Local Address/ || /-------/) {
#do nothing
} else {
$AddressCount++;
}
}
The following is now totally obsolete but I might leave it in anyway - maybe I'll sort this out later when I'll do some more reading?:
my($UDP6LocalAddress)=
/^\s+(\S+)/;
$UDP6LocalAddresses{$UDP6LocalAddress}++;

[Troll]

Thanks John - will give it a try.
"John Bokma" <po********@castleamber.com> wrote in message
news:3f*********************@news.kabelfoon.nl...

Troll wrote:

Yeah, I was trying this but kept on getting a Global parameter error of some sort:
Global symbol "" requires explicit package name

If I use the total_count method it unfortunately counts my section headings as well [I ended up simplifying the section searches a bit]

my $sum = 0;
foreach my $value (values %UDP6LocalAddresses) {

$sum += $value;
}

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