Re: [MacPerl] The S)ubstitute command

[Mark Manning/Simulacron I <markem@flash.net>]

Chris Nandor wrote:
> 
> I think you are mistaken.
> 

Actually, I tried it several times (about ten to be exact).  I kept
getting this strange behaviour.  Finally I just reinstalled MacPerl from
the CD at the back of your book and that fixed the problem.  I still
have no idea why it did this.

I'm working in a large DB (~40mb) with several fields.  I was getting
things ready to be transferred to a FileMaker DB and was modifying the
data so it would all be tab delimited.  When I examined the datafile the
data appeared with the spaces after the names.  Other than the
substitute command, no other changes were made to the data.  There are
approximately 46,000 records.  Only the ones which met the criteria in
the substitute command contained the spaces.  The actual substitute
command used was:

	$name =~ s/scratch.*$//;

The only reason I noticed the problem was because on those lines the
data was shoved over to the right by a large margin.  So instead of
appearing like this:

	myName	1	2	3	4	5

It appeared as:

	myName             	1	2	3	4	5	6

(Where there are tabs between each of the fields normally and the second
line has a bunch of spaces before the first tab.)  The size of the
spaces left in the name were exactly the size of the area which was
removed.

Anyway - no mistake.  And if I can get MacPerl to mess-up consistently
I'll post again about this.  If not, then I have to assume it was just a
glitch which either my system, the hard drive, or the installation of
MacPerl I had at the time.


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