question

[DBSMITH]

Is the last unless statement saying "break out of the loop only when @a is 
read completely through?
I also have a formatting question.  The output is printing a ' after a 
newline and I have played with the code by moving "print $tick in and 
outside the loop, but cannot get it to work.  Here is what I mean:

        -w 'barcode=E01497 or barcode=E01496 or barcode=E01332 or 
barcode=E00405
        'edm01:/usr/local/bin/perld>>

I would like to have the tick right after the last element E string

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use strict;
open (FH,"/usr/local/bin/perld/derektapes") or die "cannot open FH: $! 
\n";
my $w_param="-w ";
my $tick="'";
my $b_param="barcode=";
my $or_string=" or ";
chomp ( my @a = <FH>);

#       $a[$i]=$_;
#       $i++;
#       print map {$_, "\n"} @a;

        print $w_param,  $tick;
        while (@a) { 
        my @output = ();
                for ( 1..4 ) {
                        push @output, $b_param . shift @a;
                        last unless @a;
                }
        print join ($or_string, @output),"\n";
        }
print $tick;


thank you, 
Derek B. Smith
OhioHealth IT
UNIX / TSM / EDM Teams