Shell Programming and Scripting

here's another way.. you don't split on $ but split normally on spaces. then go through each element and check for dollar sign. add them to get total

Code:

$test="This is a test \$6.56 \$5.7";
@a=split /\s+/,$test;
$total=0;
foreach my $item (@a){
 if ( $item =~ /\$/){
  $item=~s/\$//;
  $total=$total+$item;
 }
}
print $total;

I guess you failed to understand the problem and didn't bother to even run my sample code to show you the problem. So now I will spell it out for you.

When perl sees '$' in a double-quoted string it is going to interpolate it and expand it into its value. Example:

Code:

$foo = 'beginner';
$string= "You are a $foo";
print $string;

If you notice when it prints there is no $ in the output but the word 'beginner' where the scalar $foo was.

Well in your string:

Code:

$test="This is a test $6.56 $5.7";

perl think $6 and $5 are scalars and expands them, but they have no values, so this what the string interpolates to:

This is a test .56 .7

If you split that on the '$' character, which is not in the string, you will get one string back, the original string.

When you open a file and parse the lines of a file perl treats that the same as a single-quoted string:

Code:

$test= 'This is a test $6.56 $5.7';

No variable interpolation/expansion so now the literal string is:

This is a test $6.56 $5.7

Which when split on the '$' character returns the values you expect.

Moral of the story.... learn the fundamentals of perl, which is the scalar and the string.

Thank you for taking the time explain what now seems such a simple question. These basic exercises do prove challenging for new students to the perl language. But with the help of the great world of the internet even us newbies don't have to feel like idiots when learning the fundamentals. Can’t wait to take the class on Advanced Unix and Shell scripting.

BTW.. I did run your script and it worked as advertised... just did not understand why my script didn't.. Thanks for your help.