variable requires explicit package name in if statement

Question

I have written a Perl subroutine that is supposed to take the name of a month and return a number if it matches, otherwise returning the original argument if not.

sub convert_month_to_number {
 my ($input) = @_;
 my @month_names = qw/January February March April May June July August September October November December/;
 my @month_names_short = qw/Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec/;
 for (my $i = 0; $i < scalar(@month_names); $i = $i + 1){
    print "$month_names[$i]\n";
    if ($input == $month_names[$i]{
        return $i;

    }   
 }

return $input;  
}

}

However, when compiling this in Padre I receive the error:

syntax error at additionalscripts.pl line 16, near "}"
Global symbol "$input" requires explicit package name at additionalscripts.pl li
ne 19.
syntax error at additionalscripts.pl line 20, near "}"
Execution of additionalscripts.pl aborted due to compilation errors.

I'm not exactly sure why this is occurring, considering how I've already declared $input as a global variable up top. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm currently using Perl 5.010 on Windows.

Ignore all lines EXCEPT THE FIRST, because rest is caused by parser getting stuck. **syntax error at additionalscripts.pl line 16, near "}"** fix this. — Oleg V. Volkov, Apr 05 '16 at 13:12
OT: there are other ways to [iterate with indices](http://stackoverflow.com/a/975926/132382) — pilcrow, Apr 05 '16 at 13:23

fugu · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-06T07:32:43.243

You had a few errors in your code, which I've cleaned up.

my @test = qw(Foo January Bar);
say convert_month_to_number($_) foreach @test;

sub convert_month_to_number {
    my ($input) = shift;
    my @month_names = qw/January February March April May June July August September October November December/;
    my @month_names_short = qw/Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec/;

    for (my $i = 0; $i < @month_names; $i++){
        if ($month_names[$i] eq $input){
            return $i;
        }

    }
    return $input;

}

variable requires explicit package name in if statement

1 Answers1