Perl Division Problem

[youjay]

I've been out of perl for a while, so I am starting from scratch. I have a small applet which scans a set of directories, getting information from some files in each one, and displaying selected data.

The script works good, but I need to set in some tabbing on the terminal, and that is where the problem comes in. as soon as I attempt a division, the applet blows up, and it is not a divide by 0 error.

I have tested the particular line of code with all arithmetic operators, and the code only refuses to compile when I use the division operator.

The error display is:

Bareword found where operator expected at ./ideaStatus line 51, near "case"
(Missing semicolon on previous line?)
Bareword found where operator expected at ./ideaStatus line 52, near "case"
(Missing semicolon on previous line?)
Bareword found where operator expected at ./ideaStatus line 53, near "case"
(Missing semicolon on previous line?)
syntax error at ./ideaStatus line 49, near ") {"
syntax error at ./ideaStatus line 51, near "/^"
syntax error at ./ideaStatus line 52, near "/^"
syntax error at ./ideaStatus line 53, near "/^"
syntax error at ./ideaStatus line 53, near "; }"
Execution of ./ideaStatus aborted due to compilation errors.

The code is:

[CODE=perl]
#!/usr/bin/perl
use Switch;
use integer;


$baseDir = "~/Desktop/IdeaBin";
$tablen = 8;

#-----------
# list existing project ideas

print "locating existing project ideas from $baseDir\n";
$listIdx = 0;

opendir(DIRHAND LE, $baseDir) || die "Cannot opendir $baseDir: $!";
foreach $name (sort readdir(DIRHAND LE)) {
# --- make sure it is a directory
if (-d "$baseDir/$name") {
# --- and it's not the . .. dir links
if ( $name !~ /^\./ ) {
@Ideas[$listIdx]=$name;
$listIdx++;
}
}
}
closedir(DIRHAN DLE);


print "Code\t\tName\t \t\t\t\tDate\t\ tStatus\n";
# Cycle through our list
for $i (@Ideas ) {
$file = $baseDir."/".$i."/$i.txt";

open (LOGFILE, $file) or die "I couldn't open $file\n";

$x = 0;
while ( $x == 0 ) {
$line = <LOGFILE> ;

if ( $line =~ /^\n/ ) {
$x=1;

} else {
@line = split(/:/, $line);
$y = (length $line[1]) - 2 ;

$tbs = ((length $line[1])-((length $line[1])%8)) ;
# any attempt at division causes the program to bork on this line
# comment the line, and it all runs fine
# change to any other operand, and it runs fine
# out of ideas -- wtf!!!
$ts = int( $tbs / 8 ) ;

switch ( $line[0] ) {
case /^Status/ { print substr $line[1], 1, $y; print "\n"; }
case /^Code/ { print substr $line[1], 1, $y; print "\t"; }
case /^When/ { print substr $line[1], 1, $y; print "\t"; }
case /^Name/ { print substr $line[1], 1, $y; print "\t"; }
}
}
}
close LOGFILE;

# print "located $i\n";
}
[/CODE]

if you need to create a test run, create a directory, with a file of the directory name.txt in it
eg : ~/Desktop/IdeaBin/TestDir/TestDir.txt

content template is:
;----------------
Code: Test
Name: Test Application
Who: Some Body
When: Jul 24, 2007
Status: Open

;----------------

[KevinADC]

instead of :

$tbs = ((length $line[1])-((length $line[1])%8)) ;

try:

$tbs = length $line[1] - (length $line[1] %8 );

and report back.