This example demonstrates howto parse a multicolumn and multirow textfile delimited by TABs. It dynamically determines the number of rows and columns.


#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# Parse Multicolumn Textfile
# (c) 2005 by Sascha Tayefeh
# http://www.tayefeh.de/
#
# This example demonstrates howto parse a 
# multicolumn and multirow textfile delimited
# by TABs. It dynamically determines the
# number of rows and columns.
#

use strict;

my ($infile,$i,$j,$hello);
my (@line,@sum);

$infile="multi-row-column.dat.txt";

open(IN, "< $infile") or die "Could not open $infile\n";

while (
  
   )
{
    chomp;
    if($_ =~ /^[0-9]/) # only add if line starts with a digit
    { 
	push @line, [split '\t', $_]; # make an array and push it into @line
    }
}

print "Table read:  $#line rows and  $#{$line[0]} columns.\n";
print "$line[1][2] \n";

for $i (0 .. $#line)
{
    for $j (0 .. $#{$line[$i]})
    {
	print $line[$i][$j]," ";
	$sum[$j]+=$line[$i][$j];
    }
    print "\n";
}

# Do something (not so) interesting
for (@sum)
{
    print "$_ ";
}
print "\n";