comment on

Hello everyone. I am having a problem with the character Ć in the string Ćon Flux not being captured by the first_alpha subroutine below. A space character is being returned. This problem arose when I recently re-encoded my files from Windows-1252 to UTF-8. I am baffled. As always, I appreciate all the help I get.

sub first_alpha {
  my $alpha = shift;
  $alpha = ucfirst($alpha) if $alpha =~ /^\l./;
  $alpha =~ s/\s*\b(A|a|An|an|The|the)(_|\s)//xi;
  if ($alpha =~ /^\d/) {
    $alpha = '#';
  }
  elsif ($alpha !~ /^\p{uppercase}/) {
    $alpha = '!';
  }
  else {
    $alpha =~ s/^(.)(\w|\W)+/$1/;
  }
  return $alpha;
}
[download]

Even substr('Ćon Flux', 0, 1) returns a space character.

The weird thing that I found is that the string Ćon Flux is returned when I ran the data from the file through my make_hash subroutine then ran that hash through my alpha_hash subroutine, both in the same module as first_alpha. (You can see the full module here.)

sub make_hash {
  my %opt = @_;
  my $file = $opt{'file'} && ref($opt{'file'}) eq 'ARRAY' ? data_file(
+@{$opt{'file'}}) : $opt{'file'};
  open(my $fh, '<', $file) || die "Can not open $file $!";

  my @headings = $opt{'headings'} ? @{$opt{'headings'}} : ('heading');

  my %hash;
  while (my $line = <$fh>) {
    chomp $line;
    die "This file is not for Util::Data! Stopped $!" if $line =~ /no 
+Util::Data/i;

    my @values = split(/\|/,$line);
    my $key = scalar @headings > 1 ? $values[0] : shift @values;

    my $n = 0;
    for my $r_heading (@headings) {
      if (defined($values[$n]) && length($values[$n]) > 0) {
        my $split = $r_heading =~ /\+$/ ? 1 : 0;
        (my $heading = $r_heading) =~ s/\+$//;

        my $value = $split == 1 ? [map { $_ =~ s/^ //; $_ } split(/;/,
+$values[$n])] : $values[$n];

        if (scalar @headings > 1) {
          $hash{$key}{$heading} = $value;
        }
        else {
          $hash{$key} = $value;
        }
      }
      $n++;
    }
  }
  return \%hash;
}

sub alpha_hash {
  my ($org_list, $opt) = @_;
  my %alpha_hash;
  for my $org_value (keys %{$org_list}) {
    my $alpha = !$opt->{article} ? first_alpha($org_value) : substr($o
+rg_value, 0, 1);
    $alpha_hash{$alpha}{$org_value} = $org_list->{$org_value};
  }
  return \%alpha_hash;
}
[download]

The following is truncated output from alpha_hash.

          'A' => [
                   'Alphas',
                   'Arrow',
                   'Ash vs. Evil Dead'
                 ],
          '&#65533;' => [ # in my terminal, there is just a blank spac
+e between the quotes.
                   'Ćon Flux (1991)'
                 ],
          'I' => [
                   'I Spy (1965)',
                   'The Invisible Man (2000)'
                 ],
[download]

As I said earlier, any and all help is appreciated.

No matter how hysterical I get, my problems are not time sensitive. So, relax, have a cookie and a very nice day!

Lady Aleena

In reply to Special character not being captured by Lady_Aleena

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