Question

I am new to Perl and still trying to figure out how to code in this language.

I am currently trying to split a long single string of csv into multiple lines.

Data example

a,b,c<br />x,y,x<br />

which I so far have manage to split up, adding in quotes, to add into a CSV file again later on:

"a,b,c""x,y,z"

By having the quotes it just signifies which sets of CSV are together as such.

The problem I am having is that when I try and create a CSV file, passing in data in a string i am getting an error

“Can’t call method “parse” on an undefined variable.

When I print out the string which I am passing in, it is defined and holds data. I am hoping that this is something simple which I am doing wrong through lack of experience.

The CSV code which I am using is:

use warnings;
use Text::CSV;
use Data::Dumper;
use constant debug => 0;
use Text::CSV;

print "Running CSV editor......\n";

#my $csv = Text::CSV->new({ sep_char => ',' });

my $file = $ARGV[0] or die "Need to get CSV file on the command line\n";

my $fileextension = substr($file, -4);

#If the file is a CSV file then read in the file.
if ($fileextension =~ m/csv/i)
{   
    print "Reading and formating: $ARGV[0] \n";

    open(my $data, '<', $file) or die "Could not open '$file' $!\n";

    my @fields;
    my $testline;
    my $line;

    while ($line = <$data>) 
    {       
        #Clears the white space at the end of the line.
        chomp $line;

        #Splits the line up and removes the <br />.
        $testline = join "\" \" ", split qr{<br\s?/>}, $line;

        #my $newStr = join $/, @lines;
        #print $newStr;
        my $q1 = "\"";
        $testline = join "", $q1,$testline,$q1;
        print "\n printing testline: \n $testline \n";

    } 

    $input_string = $testline;

    print "\n Testing input string line:\n $input_string";

    if ($csv->parse ($input_string)) 
    {
     my @field = $csv->fields;

     foreach my $col (0 .. $#field) {
         my $quo = $csv->is_binary ($col) ? $csv->{quote_char} : "";
         printf "%2d: %s%s%s\n", $col, $quo, $field[$col], $quo;#
        }
    }
    else 
    {
     print STDERR "parse () failed on argument: ",
         $csv->error_input, "\n";
     $csv->error_diag ();
     }
    #print $_,$/ for @lines;

print "\n Finished reading and formating: $ARGV[0] \n";
}else
{   
    print "Error: File is not a CSV file\n"
}

Answer 1

You did not create a Text::CSV object, but you try to use it.

“Can’t call method “parse” on an undefined variable

This means that your $csv is not there, thus it does not have a method called parse. Simply create a Text::CSV object first, at the top of your code below all the use lines.

my $csv = Text::CSV->new;

Pleae take a look at the CPAN documentation of Text::CSV.

---

Also, did I mention you should use strict?