Date: 28 Jun 2001 17:53:43 GMT
From: anno4000@lublin.zrz.tu-berlin.de (Anno Siegel)
Subject: Re: Scanning a file in CGI
Message-Id: <9hfqv7$k43$1@mamenchi.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE>

[please don't top-post]

According to Jim Melanson <jim@perlservices.com>:
> Hi,
 
In your code below, you are promoting a number of misconceptions.

> Change this:
> 
>     while(<I>)
>      {
>       ($ref,$area,$doctitle,$docnr,$doclink,$catalog,$keyw)= split(/|/);
> 
> to this:
> 
>     my @contents = <I>;
>    close I;
>    chomp @contents;

There is absolutely *no* advantage in reading the whole file into
memory at once.  Why do you propose it?

>     for(my $a = 0; $a <= $#contents; $a++) {

There is no reason whatever to walk through the array using indexes.
See below.

>       ($ref,$area,$doctitle,$docnr,$doclink,$catalog,$keyw)= split(/|/,
                                                                      ^
                                                                  here...
 ...you might have noticed a severe bug.  The "|" must be escaped in a
regex.  Did you test your code?


> $contents[$a]);
> 
> 
> This will loop through the the file in order. If you don't care if it gets
> the exact order, this is faster:

What are you going on about?  foreach processes the elements of an
array in order.  You were probably thinking about a hash.  Big
difference.

> foreach(@contents) {
>     ($ref,$area,$doctitle,$docnr,$doclink,$catalog,$keyw)= split(/|/, $_);

[snip of huge sig & jeopardectomy]

Anno