Print CSV header with Tie::Handle::CSV

Question

I wrote a perl script using Tie::Handle::CSV to process a bunch of data in a csv file and print out only what I need into a new csv file. Right now, I print out the header line with all of the field names by just a hardcoding it in like so:

print '"TERM", "STUDENT ID", "NAME", ..."'."\n";

I suspect this is a dumb way of doing this, but I don't know how to get access to the header from within the Tie::Handle::CSV object. It's instantiated like so,

my $fh = Tie::Handle::CSV->new($file,header=> 1);

and data is accessed like so,

$line -> {'CATALOG_NBR'}

I know enough to know this is a hash-reference, but not enough to know how to print the header using this rather than hardcoding it. Obviously, "they" usually change the precise column names and ordering just after I get the script working again each term.

Thanks a lot for any help! JA

Answer 1

A bit late to the party, but I just released a new version of Tie::Handle::CSV (should be up on CPAN in a few hours). It adds support for a header() method, which returns a CSV formatted header. Usage might look like:

   my $fh = Tie::Handle::CSV->new( $file, header => 1 );
   print $fh->header;

Hope this helps,

• danboo