Number one: when in doubt use
perl -w, or replace
#!/usr/bin/perl with
#!/usr/bin/perl -w this will give you all kinds of helpful diagnostics
when things don't seem to be happening as you'd expect them to.
Number two: use
use strict; just toss that in at the top of your program and it will force you
to declare your variables before you use them. To declare them all you have to do is something like the
following:
my $stuff;
my @array;
my %hash;
my ($count,$max,$min,$avg); #this initializes several scalars at once
This can save you countless hours later if you've mistyped a variable name. You'll know about it.
